How You Can Embrace the Winter Arc
The Winter Arc is a 90-day self-improvement mission that begins on October 1st and runs to the New Year. The dark, cold months are used to turn inward, away from the crowd, and build yourself.
Science of Training
REP Fitness Introduces the Purist Protein Bar
REP Fitness announced the launch of its newest product, the Purist Protein Bar on October 12th. Designed with both performance and taste in mind, the Purist Protein Bar is the result of over a year of development, ingredient tweaking, and taste testing by the REP Fitness team. Initially created to provide high-quality snacks for their … Read more
Eccentric Flywheel Training Explained | Everything You Need to Know
What is an Eccentric Flywheel Inertial Trainer? An eccentric flywheel trainer is a strength and power training device that uses muscle force to rotate a weighted flywheel. A nylon strap connects the exerciser to the central shaft of the flywheel. Spinning the flywheel winds the strap around the shaft. The inertia (spinning resistance) created by … Read more
How Strong Are CrossFit Games Athletes
CrossFit is an intriguing sport because any one can walk into a gym and attempt the same workouts that they watched the world’s best athletes perform at the Games. People that regularly weight train can also appreciate the loads that these athletes are repeatedly lifting, at high speed and under immense fatigue. However, I think … Read more
How to Increase HGH Production with Strength Training
Human growth hormone (HGH) is a naturally occurring anabolic hormone in the body secreted by the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. HGH promotes tissues regeneration, cell reproduction and muscle protein synthesis (1). As a result, HGH plays a key role in muscle (and bone) building, particularly through puberty and after strength/resistance training. There … Read more
Why Bigger Muscles Are (Usually) Stronger Muscles
We all resistance train and lift weights for different reasons. Some may train for general health, others to get strong, change our body composition or to improve athletic performance. However, I would guess that we all like to look in the mirror to check if our muscles have gotten bigger. One of the common questions … Read more
You Don’t Need to Train to Failure to Build Muscle (But You Might Want To)
There are all kinds of theories out there about building muscle. Every gym bro will give you their opinion – lift to failure to build muscle, don’t lift to failure, lift heavy weights, stay light …but rarely is their advice rooted in science. Instead, these gym bros just spew the same things someone told them. … Read more
Do Massage Guns work? Scientific Research Summary
Self-massage guns and vibrating massage tools are taking over the athlete warm-up and recovery world. Seemingly overnight every athlete that I work with as a Strength and Conditioning Coach now has some sort of self-massaging piece of equipment. People swear by massage gun’s ability to decrease muscle knots, improve flexibility and make the body feel … Read more
Using Thick Handle Training for Serious Strength Gains
Grip strength is usually overlooked in strength athletes’ development. Lack of grip training leads to a muscular imbalance that never allows the individual to reach his or her full potential (Sorin, 2001). Improved forearm and hand strength allows for greater force production (Sorin, 2001) because you are better connected to what you are holding – … Read more
Turtle Shell Abs and the CrossFit Core Explained
CrossFit and functional fitness athletes have pretty amazing physiques. They are shredded nearly year-round and are crazy strong. On top of their huge arms, bulging quads and thick backs they also have huge midsections. The abs we commonly see on CrossFitters has become known as turtle shell abs. The name pays homage to the belly … Read more