Ultimate Chest Warm-up

Perform the following program prior to every upper body workout. These movements will activate the muscles in your shoulders, back, chest, and arms, which helps you lift more weight and prevent injury. These exercise movements should take no more than 10 minutes.

Push-up Circuit
Complete 1 set of 5-10 repetitions of each push-up version listed below. After each set rest 10-20 seconds, then continue on to the next exercise. Use the higher number of repetitions if you've been resistance training for more at least 1-2 years.

How to Perform This Circuit: You'll use variations of the standard push-up. For each movement, assume a push-up position (with your body in a straight line from your ankles to your shoulders), before lowering your chest to the floor. Press your body back to the starting position by straightening your arms.

STANDARD PUSH-UP
Position your body into a push-up stance with your hands set just wider than shoulder-width. Your body should form a straight line from your head to your ankles. Lower your body until your chest almost touches the floor, then push yourself back up to the starting position. That’s constitutes one repetition.DIAMOND PUSH-UP
Do a push-up, but with your hands close enough for the tips of your thumbs and index fingers to touch, forming a diamond shape.WIDE-HANDS PUSH-UP
Place your hands about twice the width of your shoulders.STAGGERED-HANDS PUSH-UP
Place one hand in the standard push-up position and your other hand a few inches farther forward.EXPLOSIVE PUSH-UP
After you lower your body, press yourself up so forcefully that your hands leave the floor.

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After completing these push-ups, perform the following 2 exercises designed to improve the range of motion in your shoulders and protect your joints before lifting heavier weights.

DUMBBELL LATERAL RAISE AND EXTERNAL ROTATION
Perform 1-2 sets of 15 repetitions. Grab a light pair of dumbbells and hold them at arm's length with your palms turned toward each other. Bend your elbows to 90 degrees. Without changing the bend in your arms, raise your upper arms out to the sides until they're parallel to the floor. Rotate your upper arms up and back so that your forearms are pointing toward the ceiling. Pause, then reverse the movement and return to the starting position.CABLE DIAGONAL RAISE
Perform 1-2 sets of 15 repetitions per arm. Attach a D-ring handle to the low pulley of a cable station. Standing with your right side toward the weight stack, grab the handle with your left hand and position it in front of your right hip, with your elbow slightly bent. Without changing the bend in your elbow, pull the handle up and across your body until your hand is slightly above your head. Lower the handle to the starting position. Complete all repetitions with your left arm, then immediately do the same with your right arm.

15-Minute Workout: 3 Moves, 300 Muscles

Perform the following exercises as a circuit. Do 10 repetitions of each exercise, then complete as many circuits as you can within a 15 minute time frame. Make your rest periods as brief as possible and only when you need to. Resume working on your circuit until the 15 minutes is up. As your conditioning improves, you can increase your repetitions or decrease the amount of rest you take.

BODY-WEIGHT SQUAT
Begin by standing with your feet hip-width apart. Lower your body slowly as far as you can by pushing your glutes back and bending your hips and knees until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Pause, then slowly stand back up.

JUDO PUSH-UP
Begin this exercise by getting into a push-up position. You want to set your feet about hip-width apart and forward, then raise your hips so your body almost forms an upside-down V shape. You'll lower the front of your body until your chin comes near the floor. Next, you will lower your hips as you raise your head and shoulders toward the ceiling. Now reverse the movement and return to your starting position.

SPRINTER SIT-UP
Lie on your back with your legs straight and your arms at your sides, keeping your elbows bent at 90 degree angles. As you sit-up, twist your upper body to your left and bring your left knee toward your right elbow, while you swing your left arm back. Lower your body to the starting position, and repeat the movement to your right. That's constitutes 1 repetition.

Switch Up a Boring Workout for Better Results

Sometimes I think life would be better if we all had a refresh button for everything: a bitter coworker, a lame bar scene, the Padres, the Chargers. Just a click or two could give us instant improvement. It's the same with a tired workout program.

Maybe your workout has frozen up like a gym version of Windows. You may think you have to reboot or even upgrade. Instead, all you need are a few tweaks for a faster, more enjoyable, more effective workout. Let's look at a typical stale workout program:

• treadmill for 5 minutes
• then bench presses until someone asks if you're almost done—in which case you're suddenly on your last set
• next, a few rows, curls, and crunches
• finally, some quick toe touches and you're done.

You can do better, beginning with your warm-up. Most people, if they warm-up at all, do only a few minutes of light cycling or jogging. That’s fine if all you plan to do during your workout is lower-body exercise. However, an upper-body workout demands something that's more in sync with your plans. Switch your warm-up to jumping rope, light rowing, or using a cardiovascular machine, like an elliptical trainer, that makes you pump your arms.

As for the rest of your workout routine... stop calling it routine. Refresh your workout, and yourself, with the following moves.

1. START WITH YOUR HAMSTRINGS
   Most people do the exercises they like first and save the ones they know they hate for last. Toward the end of a workout, you either put little effort into these exercises or just skip them entirely. Performing your workout in the opposite order can give muscles you tend to overlook (such as your hamstrings) the attention they deserve. Saving your favorite exercises for last can help you recharge when your energy level is in decline.


2. STRETCH BETWEEN SETS
   Don’t stretch only when your muscles feel tight. Stretching your muscles as you work them not only helps them stay loose, but can also increase your range of motion, allowing you to work more muscle fibers with each additional set.


3. TAKE A COFFEE BREAK
   Anytime you draw your legs toward your midsection (reverse crunches, V-ups), you emphasize your lower abdominal muscles. These moves also stress your hip flexors, the muscles on the front of your thighs. When these muscles are involved, your abdominal muscles exert less than full effort, and you end up with tight hip flexors. Overcome this tendency by pretending there’s a cup of coffee resting just below your belly button. Before bringing your legs up each time, imagine tilting that cup toward your legs first. This redirects your body positioning, so the effort stays concentrated on your lower abdomen.


4. CLOSE YOUR EYES
   This helps you visualize your muscles as you're working them. This is especially helpful for posterior muscle groups like your back, hamstrings, and butt. Try closing your eyes during any exercise that involves balance, such as a one-legged squat. It challenges your neuromuscular system and helps you establish better balance. It’s actually harder to close just one eye than both eyes.


5. CHANGE YOUR INCLINATION
   Rather than do 3 sets of flat bench presses followed by 3 sets of incline barbell presses, try combining the 2 exercises. Start with one set of chest presses using a flat bench. Then raise the bench one notch to about 15 to 20 degrees for your second set. Continue raising the angle one notch per set, to a maximum of 45^O. This lets you exhaust more muscle fibers by working your chest through the angles between 0 and 45^O, the angles which are most effective for chest work. This is better than doing just the basic 2 angles. You may actually end up doing fewer sets, but work the muscle through more angles and possibly saving time, too.


6. GET TWISTED
   During a regular single-arm dumbbell row, your palm faces in as you raise and lower the weight along the side of your chest. To get more out of this move, rotate your wrist inward 180 degrees as you lower the dumbbell so that your thumb ends up pointing behind you when your arm is fully extended. This rotation helps adduct your scapula, working your back through a fuller range of motion for added strength and size.


7. STOP AND GO
   Instead of raising and lowering a weight in one continuous motion, pause for a second about halfway up, continue the movement, and then pause again about halfway down. In a set of 8-12 repetitions, you’ll add only an extra 16-24 seconds to each set, but this short isometric hold will allow you to exhaust your muscles faster using less weight. This tactic works great when performing shoulder presses, lateral raises, and bent-over lateral raises.


8. LOWER THE WEIGHT WITH ONE LEG
   Your muscles are much stronger during the eccentric phase of an exercise—when the weight is being lowered. When performing leg presses, leg curls, and leg extensions, consider the 2 up, 1 down option. Try pressing or curling the weight up with both legs, then slowly lowering the weight back down using only 1 leg. This lets you work your muscles even harder in the same amount of time without constantly needing to change the weight.


9. SPREAD 'EM
   Instead of keeping your hands placed at shoulder width for all your repetitions, change your hand spacing with each set of barbell curls. Spreading your hands a few inches farther out stresses more of the inner portion of your biceps, while bringing your hands in a few inches builds more of the outer part. Try switching from the standard shoulder-width grip on a barbell to an angled position with an EZ-curl bar.


10. RUN THE RACK
    Save time on your last dumbbell exercise at the end of your workout. Instead of doing 3 sets of shoulder presses, biceps curls, or any dumbbell move, start with a weight that’s about 50% of what you usually use to do 10-12 repetitions. Perform the exercise for 6 repetitions, then quickly grab the weight that's one increment heavier. Continue working your way up in weight until you finally find one that you can't lift for 6 repetitions using proper technique. Now reverse the process by grabbing a slightly lighter weight and completing as many repetitions as possible, even if you can only manage a few. Keep moving down the rack until you're left using the lightest set of dumbbells available.

Basic Training: Tip for June

Next time you perform dumbbell bench presses, make sure that your arms are a few inches wider than usual. Avoid locking out your elbows at the top of the motion. This will keep constant tension on your pectorals to allow for a fully developed look.

Truth About Sugar

Say anything nasty about sugar and folks will swallow it. Sugar caused the recession. Sugar keyed your car. Sugar’s crazy—it knifed my cousin down at the corner bar last Saturday night. Somebody should drop a safe on sugar. Well, maybe.

It’s true that sugar is insidious—diabolical even. It's hidden in countless processed foods. It certainly contributes to the obesity crisis. It makes people fat and diabetic. These claims are correct—to a limited and oversimplified extent. Sugar doesn't point a gun to our heads and force us to eat it. It's only as big a bogeyman as we make it out to be.

You need some truth about sugar. It's too important. The sugar in your body, glucose, is a fundamental fuel for your body and brain. The health threat to you arises from a very personal level. Sugars taste good. Sweetened foods tend to make you overeat. That threatens the energy balance in your body.

Today's post will provide you with a few facts about the sweet stuff hiding in some of your favorite meals and drinks. The next time you hear that sugar's bad, you won’t be tempted to drag sugar behind a dumpster and kick the crap out of it. The fact is, you may be the one who’s out of line.

Sugar and Diabetes
Sugar doesn't cause diabetes... Too much sugar does. Diabetes means your body can’t clear glucose from your blood stream. When glucose isn’t processed quickly enough, it destroys tissue. People with type 1 diabetes were born that way—sugar didn’t cause their diabetes. Excessive weight gain in children and adults can cause metabolic syndrome, which leads to type 2 diabetes. That’s what diabetes is all about—being unable to eliminate glucose. The negative effect of eating a lot of sugar is a rise in glucose. A normal pancreas and normal insulin receptors can handle it, clear it out, or store it in some packaged form, like fat.

What matters: Overeating forces your pancreas to work overtime cranking out insulin to clear glucose. In today’s world, it’s certainly possible that the unprecedented increase in sugar and starch consumption leads to pancreatic burnout. Researchers can’t be sure, because everyone’s body and eating habits are different. That makes generalization iffy. One thing for sure is that the rise in sugar consumption over the past 100 years is unprecedented.

Your job: Drop your excess pounds if you’re overweight and watch your sugar intake. Research has shown for years that dropping 5%-7% of your body weight can reduce your odds of developing diabetes.

Sugar and High-Fructose Corn Syrup (aka Corn Sugar)
Simply avoiding Corn Sugar won’t save you from obesity. In the 1970s and 1980s, the average American’s body weight increased in tandem with the food industry’s use of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a staple because it’s cheap. Unfortunately, it's not a smoking gun. This is a correlation, not a causation. Obesity is about consuming too many calories. It just so happens that a lot of overweight people have been drinking HFCS in sodas and eating foods that are high on the glycemic index—sweet snacks, white bread, and so forth. The calorie totals are huge, and the source just happens to be sugar-based. The food industry knows this. That's why last year they went from calling HFCS to just corn sugar and trying to tell you that it's natural and safe.

The effect of a high-glycemic food can be lessened by adding fat and protein. Spreading almond butter (protein and fat) on a bagel (starch, which becomes glucose in your body), for instance, slows your body’s absorption of the sugar, but not by much.

What matters: We can demonize food manufacturers because they produce junk food with enough salt and sugar to make us eat more of it than we should—or even want to. It comes down to how much we allow down our throats. A practical guide for anyone is weight. If your weight is under control, then your calorie intake across the board is reasonable. If your weight rises, it’s not. That’s more important than paying attention to any specific macronutrient. Still, skinny isn’t always safe. (Keep reading for more details.)

Sugar and Fat
Too much sugar fills your blood with fat. Studies dating back decades show that eating too much fructose, a sugar found naturally in fruit and also added to processed foods, raises your blood lipid levels. While the relatively modest quantities in fruit shouldn’t worry you, a University of Minnesota study showed that the large amounts of fructose we take in from processed foods may prove especially nasty: Men on high-fructose eating plans had 32% higher triglycerides than men on high-glucose eating plans. Why? Your body can’t metabolize a sweet snack as fast as you can eat it. So your liver puts some of the snack’s glucose into your blood-stream, or stores it for later use. If your liver’s tank is full, it packages the excess as triglycerides. The snack’s fructose goes to your liver as well, but instead of being deposited into your bloodstream, it’s stored as glycogen. Your liver can store about 90-100 grams of glycogen, so it converts the excess to fat (the triglycerides).

What matters: By maintaining a healthy weight, most people can keep their triglycerides at acceptable levels. If you’re overweight or gaining weight, however, they’ll accumulate and become a core predictor of heart disease and stroke. If you’re one of those overweight people, your first step is to lay off sugary and starchy foods, beer, and sweet drinks. Your body wasn’t built to handle all that sugar.

Consider this: You’d have to eat 4 apples in order to ingest roughly the same amount of fructose in one large McDonald’s Coke.

Oral Glucose Tolerance Test
Too much sugar stresses your system. Health care providers use the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) to diagnose pre-diabetes and diabetes. For an OGTT, you consume 75 grams of glucose to see how your system processes sugar. It's a kind of stress test—downing that kind of sugar load is not something you should normally do.

A 24-ounce soda often contains more than 75 grams of sugar, most of it likely corn sugar. Roughly half of that 75 grams is fructose, so that soda shock may be worse than your health care provider's test is. The way people eat now-a-days, unintentional stress tests probably happen quite often.

What matters: Maybe you figure your body can process a big sugar load without damage. That’s like pointing to a man who smokes until he's 90 years old and dodges emphysema or cancer. Why gamble? Severe hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) can cause blurred vision, extreme thirst, and frequent urges to urinate. Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) is easier to spot: You feel weak with cold sweats and anxiety, blurred vision, or tiredness a couple of hours after a sugar binge. Sound familiar? Ask about an OGTT, which is more accurate than the simpler fasting glucose blood test.

Avoid Blood Sugar Spikes
Fewer blood sugar spikes help you live longer. If you live large—big meals, lots of beer, little moderation—you may be shortening your life even if your weight is okay. Repeated blood sugar spikes stress your organs that make up the metabolic engine of your body. That takes a toll. You might not even notice. People can live symptom-free for years in a pre-diabetic state even though they've lost as much as 50% of their pancreatic function. People with pre-diabetes share the same health risks, especially for heart disease, that haunt people with full-blown diabetes.

What matters: Moderation. It’s simple, yet difficult. Think about what you put in your mouth. Sugar is diabolical. It tastes great and is less filling. Back off on the high-impact glycemics such as: beer, sugary soft drinks, and sport drinks, potatoes, pasta, baked goods, and pancakes. The less sugar stress you put on your system, the longer it will function properly. Stop blaming sugar for all your problems. Even if it is diabolical.

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Most Underrated Body Weight Exercise

There’s a saying: If you’re not rowing, you’re muscles aren't growing. There’s no better way to start doing both than with an exercise called: The Inverted Row. If you haven't mastered this move, you have some work to do. It's one of the most underrated, underused movements there is. It's also one of the simplest.

Besides being a great pure muscle-builder, the inverted row is valuable because it strengthens your rear shoulders and upper back. These oft-neglected muscles directly complement the muscles used in the bench press—a benefit that can help prevent a slumped posture. Think of it this way: If you can bench-press far more than you can row, the stronger muscles on the front side of your upper body will overpower the weaker ones on your back. It's like a tug-of-war in your torso—with your upper back ending up in the mud pit. This type of strength imbalance also shows poor shoulder stability, a key predictor of injury and chronic pain.

Here's A Test: If you can't do 10 perfect repetitions of the inverted row with perfect form, chances are you have a serious imbalance. My advice: start doing 2 sets of the inverted row for every one set of bench presses (or other chest exercise) that you perform. Use this approach until you eliminate your weak spot.Variations

Ways to Get Stronger Without Lifting a Weight

Few people believe it, but you don't need barbells, dumbbells, or machines to build muscle. In fact, weight-training equipment can often inhibit your progress. That's because it's usually in a gym, which might explain why many people can't get in the exercise they need. After all, it takes time and effort to get to the gym, doesn't it? What if I told you that wherever you are, anywhere you go, your gym is right there?

First, you need to learn a little bit about physics and how it affects your muscle workout.

Consider the pull-up: It’s the standard by which all body-weight exercises are measured. Even the most hard-core lifters will agree that there’s no better muscle builder for your upper body—with or without weights. The reason for its effectiveness: It takes full advantage of the scientific laws of motion and leverage, placing your body in a position that forces your back and arms to lift your entire body weight. Call it applied science at its finest.

Now imagine if all body-weight exercises were as challenging as the pull-up. You’d be able to build muscle anywhere, anytime—at home, on the road, or even in a public park. Physical science makes this possible.

Laws of Body-Weight Training.

1. The Longer Your Body, The Weaker You Become
   The Scientific Principle: By increasing the distance between the point of force (your target muscles) and the end of the object you’re trying to lift (your body), you decrease your mechanical advantage. Think of it this way: An empty barbell is easy to lift off the floor if you grab it in the middle. But try moving a few inches in one direction and it instantly seems heavier—even though its weight hasn't changed. The same is true of your body: Lengthen it and every exercise you do becomes harder.
   
   How To Apply This Principle: Raise your hands above your head—so your arms are straight and in line with your body—during a lunge, squat, crunch, or sit-up. If that's too hard, split the distance by placing your hands behind your head.


2. The Farther You Move, The More Muscle You Work
   The Scientific Principle: In physics, mechanical work is equal to force (or weight) times distance.W = F x DSince your muscles and bones function together as simple machines—they form class 1, 2, and 3 levers—the same formula applies to your body. It’s the most basic of principles: Do more work, build more muscle. Of course, in a weight-free workout, you can’t increase force (unless you gain weight). You can boost your work output by moving a greater distance during each repetition.
   
   How To Apply This Principle: Each of the following 3 methods increases the distance your body has to travel from start to finish, increasing not only the total amount of work you do, but also the amount of work you do in the most challenging portion of the exercise.
   1. Hard: Move the floor farther away. For many body-weight exercises—lunges, push-ups, sit-ups—your range of motion ends at the floor. The solution: Try placing your front or back foot on a step when doing lunges; position your hands on books or your feet on a chair when doing push-ups; and place a rolled-up towel under the arch in your lower back when doing sit-ups.
   2. Harder: Add on a quarter. From the starting position of a push-up, squat, or lunge, lower yourself into the down position. But instead of pushing your body all the way up, raise it only a quarter of the way. Then lower yourself again before pushing your body all the way up. That counts as one repetition.
   3. Hardest: Try mini-repetitions. Instead of pushing your body all the way up from the down position, do five smaller repetitions in which you raise and lower your body about an inch each time. After the 5th mini-repetition, push yourself up until your arms are straight. That counts as one repetition.


3. As Elastic Energy Decreases, Muscle Involvement Increases
   The Scientific Principle: When you lower your body during any exercise, you build up elastic energy in your muscles. Just like in a coiled spring, that elasticity allows you to bounce back to the starting position, reducing the work your muscles have to do. Eliminate the bounce and you’ll force your body to recruit more muscle fibers to get you moving again. How? Pause for 4 seconds in the down position of an exercise. That’s the amount of time it takes to discharge all the elastic energy of a muscle.
   
   How To Apply This Principle: Use the 4-second pause in any exercise. Give yourself an extra challenge by adding an explosive component, forcefully pushing your body off the floor—into the air as high as you can—during a push-up, lunge, or squat. Because you’re generating maximum force without any help from elastic energy, you’ll activate the greatest number of muscle fibers possible.


4. Moving In Two Directions Is Better Than Moving In One
   The Scientific Principle: Human movement occurs on 3 different geometric planes:
   1. The Sagittal Plane, for front-to-back and up-and-down movements
   2. The Frontal Plane, for side-to-side movements
   3. The Transverse Plane, for rotational movements
   Most weight-lifting movements—the bench press, barbell squat, barbell or dumbbell curl, weighted lunge, and weighted chin-up, to name a few—are performed on the Sagittal Plane; the balance of exercises—for instance, the lateral lunge and side bend—occur almost entirely on the Frontal Plane. This means that most people rarely train their bodies on the transverse plane, despite using rotation constantly in everyday life, as well as in every sport. Case in point: walking. It’s subtle, but your hips rotate with every step; in fact, watch a sprinter from behind and you’ll see that his hips rotate almost 90 degrees. By adding a rotational component to any exercise, you’ll automatically work more muscle. You’ll fully engage your core, as well as the original target muscles and simultaneously build a better performing body.
   
   How To Apply This Principle: Simply twist your torso to the right or left in exercises such as the lunge, sit-up, and push-up. You can also rotate your hips during movements such as the reverse crunch.


5. The Less Contact Your Body Has With The Floor, The More Your Muscles Must Compensate
   The Scientific Principle: The smaller the percentage of an object’s surface area that’s touching a solid base, the less stable that object is. That’s why SUVs are prone to rolling, and tall transmission towers need guy wires. Fortunately, humans have a built-in stabilization system: muscles. By forcing that internal support system to kick in—by making your body less stable—you’ll make any exercise harder, while activating dozens more muscles.
   
   How To Apply This Principle: Hold one foot in the air during virtually any exercise, including push-ups, squats, and dead-lifts. You can also do push-ups on your fingertips or your fists.