A couple weeks back, we discussed a few key points to good posture.  In today’s white collar world, many have found themselves somewhat permanently hunched over.  I say somewhat because with the tips we reviewed, anyone can achieve perfect spinal alignment.  Today, we’ll examine some of the best exercises and mobility drills for those looking to achieve ideal posture.

Shoulder dislocations are one of the best exercises when you want to start fixing your posture. Grab a broomstick, a smallish piece of PVC or an elastic band in both hands, starting with a wider than shoulder-width grip. Keeping your hands on the implement, rotate your arms overhead and behind you. As this gets easier and you do more sets, move your hands in closer.

Band pullaparts are another great exercise, and a good reason to choose a jumpstretch band as your next investment rather than a piece of PVC. Pipes and broomsticks are great, but you can’t pull them apart like you can with these durable elastic bands. Start holding the band just as you were during the dislocations. Bring your arms up, parallel to the ground, and while keeping the elbows straight, pull the arms back until your body makes a ‘t’. You can also pull the band apart overhead. Rotate your arms to point at the ceiling and pull the band apart. With these, try both straight arms, and also perform them like a pulldown or pullup, where you allow your arms to bend. With both overhead pullaparts, focus on keeping your shoulders pulled back and together (retracted).

I do this next exercise every morning shortly after waking.  I got it from a Steve Maxwell DVD, and it's super easy and effective.  Just reach your hands up high overhead.  I like to shrug a little bit to wake my traps up, and then you can let the shoulders come to a more 'relaxed' position with hands overhead.  Rotate your arms as though you were scrubbing the ceiling.  Try 10 rotations one way, then reverse and do 10 more.  Steve recommends that you do as many reps as your age, and judging by his incredible mobility, I bet he's onto something.

My favourite new exercise for shoulder mobility is the ‘no money’. Stand with your arms at your sides, then curl the forearms up as if you were holding a tray in front of you. With your palms facing up and your upper arms staying close to your sides, rotate backwards so that your hands swing around following your thumbs. You can add a band to this to increase resistance. I like to do them up against the corner of a wall or power rack, as the presence of the corner between my shoulder blades adds to my ability to ‘feel’ the movement.

Last but not least (for today, anyway) are ‘scorpions’. Lie on your face with arms outstretched (like a ‘t’, but on the ground). Swing your foot across the other side of your body and reach for the opposite hand. One swing of both feet/legs counts as one rep. You can vary your arm position (make a ‘Y’ or point down in a kind of ‘A’), and you’ll feel the stretch differently. This one’s great for opening up your chest, and I do it before every squat workout.

Start doing these mobility exercises every day for a while. You can do one or two of them when you get up from your desk each hour, and you’ll be amazed by the improvement in your posture. Stick with INNERLEVEL.net and watch your body transform!

The best training method for new trainees is Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength. This simple template will pack on muscle and make new lifters stronger than any other program I’ve witnessed. I wasted plenty of time doing silly routines copied from bodybuilding magazines, only to learn the hard way that those bodypart split systems only work well for dudes with, ah, let’s just say they’re getting a little extra help from the needle. The amazing thing about SS is that even after all that silly training, I still gained size and strength from using its simplified outline.

Despite being an internet legend, or perhaps because of its wiki-fied viral spread, SS is widely misunderstood and misused. Some versions only use the five major barbell exercises Coach Rip devoted a couple hundred pages to describing in his signature witty style. Other ‘versions’ of SS float around the internet. A change here, a change there; soon enough, you’ve got guys doing ‘Ripetows’ that miss many of the key points from the irreproachable original. I’m going to discuss what I feel is the ideal program for new trainers. Those familiar with his work will understand why I’m giving much thanks and a lot of credit to Rip, but you can still learn a thing or two about how to properly utilize SS:

Here’s the basic outline:

Day 1

-------

Squat (5x3)

Bench Press (5x3)

Deadlift (5x1)

Heavy abs (5-15x3)

Day 2

-------

Squat (5x3)

Overhead Press (5x3)

Power Cleans (3x5)

Chinups/pullups (up to 15x3)

First of all, you squat every day. This is because squatting builds more muscle from head to toe than any other exercise (deadlifts being a close second). Unlike deadlifts, which tend to be a little hard on the lower back, beginners can squat three times a week without being overtrained. The low bar squat form works everything from your upper back, all the muscles of the toso, plus the glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps and calvesBy doing the hardest exercise first, your body and mind will adapt and learn to push to a new record each workout.

The second exercise is a pressing motion. This alternates between bench press and overhead press. It’s important to keep these two lifts relatively close to one another to keep the shoulders healthy and balance musculature and athletic performance. A good ratio to shoot for is somewhere between 3:2 and 4:3. In other words, your overhead press one rep max (1RM) should be between 66% and 75% of your best bench press. The combination thoroughly works your chest, shoulders, traps and triceps.

The third exercise is a pulling motion. Alternate between one set of deadlifts and five sets of three power cleans. These exercise differ in rep scheme from those above because a) As mentioned above, the deadlift can be hard on the lower back, especially for new lifters, and especially after squatting, and b) the power clean is an explosive movement, so we keep the reps lower to facilitate good form for beginners. Deadlifts build raw strength, while power cleans build the explosive power necessary for moving heavy weights. By training the body to explode, you’re more able to handle heavy loads in the other lifts. In other words, including the power clean makes the other lifts stronger by improving neuromuscular efficiency.

I have a heavy exercise for the abs on Day 1. This can include things like situps on a back extension ‘chair’, decline situps, hanging leg raises, etc. The key thing is to pick something that’s hard enough that you can’t do more than 15 reps for 3 sets. When that starts to feel easy, add weight, make the decline steeper, or do something else to make it harder. When I did SS, I liked to work in a ‘wave’ where I’d do 10x3 one day, 8x3 the next day and 5x5 after that. You can do abs every day, but I left it as an every-other day thing because we don’t want to over work the raw newbies.

The same is true of chinups/pullups. These can be done every day because there are no other exercises in the template that directly work the lats and biceps as much as these vertical pulling motions. I’d recommend working up to being able to do 8-10 chinups for 3 sets. This should translate to about 5 pullups for 3 sets. Continue to work from there, and you can alternate between the two variations if you like. Once you get to 15 reps for 3 sets, add some weight.

Those are the basic DOs, so what kinds of things should we definitely avoid?

NEVER leave out power cleans! Plenty of internet ‘SS’ templates substitute rows for power cleans. This is downright stupid. Not only do they not work the same muscles, but rows don’t offer the explosive advantage conferred by power cleans.

NEVER use machines. This template is for barbells only. You really shouldn’t even use dumbbells here. Barbells are easier to balance, and allow you to move heavier weights, which means more muscle. Dumbbell movements are great exercises, but it’s best to start out with barbells to learn the basic movements first. This will help you to avoid injuries while you’re ‘greasing the groove’. As for machines, they’re mostly useless. With few exceptions, machines lock you into an unnatural range of motion that prevents your stabilizers from working. Sure, you can grow some muscle by using your fancy pec deck, but you won’t necessarily get stronger, and you might increase your chances of injury by neglecting the all important stabilizers.

NEVER forget to squat. Squats are the cornerstone of this program. It’s ok to switch out for front squats in the middle of your three day week once you get up to weights approaching intermediate trainee-levels, but for the most part, let’s stick to low bar back squats. This style of squatting uses the most muscle fibers and therefore allows the most growth and strength development.

NEVER add reps. If you can do your weights for 3 sets of 5 reps (or the other prescribed rep schemes for power cleans, pullups, etc.), then add some weight. It’s always better to keep moving up gradually than to overtax yourself with extra reps or too much weight. It’s a good feeling to know you smoked all three sets of squats, since you’ll be confident about the next time when you add 5-15 lbs to the bar. On the other hand, adding reps takes you out of the strength and muscle building zone we want to be in, and might make you overtrained.

NEVER add isolation exercises. This program is all about compound movements. The body doesn’t use muscles in isolation, and you shouldn’t. While it can be useful to do barbell curls (*in moderation) later in your training career, new trainers will get more out of doing chinups and pullups. It’s common sense to understand that if you’re moving more muscles, you’re going to grow more. Think of how large powerlifters’ legs are, then compare them to their biceps. Even the hugest men have biceps no larger than a softball (the triceps comprise most of the arm’s mass), but their massive legs can easily make up half of their weight. In short: the more muscle you move, the more you’ll grow.

There you go: the DOs and DON’Ts of the best beginner training program in existence. Read this over, review the form articles, and feel free to leave comments if you have questions. It’s all about getting stronger and bigger, so let’s be smarter too.

Hey, brah, how much do ya bench? Good luck overestimating how many times this question and its variants have been posed over the last century.  Just as bulging biceps have come to symbolize strength and power, the bench press has somewhat erroneously become the default measure for raw strength.  Those in the know (like you, now that you’re here understand the value of a balanced strength training program and realize that deadlifts and squats are better for total-body strength, but that takes nothing away from the bench press as one of the most efficient builders of upper body strength.  To ensure that you don’t become just another washed up meathead benching 225 week after week with no progress and plenty of nagging shoulder injuries, we’re going to emphasize proper form as the key to maximum gains and pain free progress:

1.    Lie on the bench with your shoulders retracted so they create a solid, flat platform to press from (imagine trying to hold a pencil between the shoulder blades).  Your eyes should be just ‘above’ the bar when you look straight up at the ceiling.  Place your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width, with the toes pointing slightly outward.
2.    Grab the bar with a medium-width grip, somewhere between 22” and 28”.  Press your palms up into the bar so that the weight is resting in the pad of your hand rather than up near the fingers.
3.    Arch your back so as to push up the chest, but make sure your butt is still on the bench (lifting your butt is a popular way to cheat, but will get you disqualified in a contest and constitutes a missed rep in our system).
4.    Unrack the bar and bring it over your chest to where the arms are perpendicular to the floor, keeping the elbows locked the whole time.  Make sure to keep your wrists locked throughout the entire set.
5.    Take a deep breath and hold it in as you lower the bar straight down, tucking the elbows in to allow the bar to touch in the middle of the sternum.
6.    Drive the bar up, exhaling about half way up (feel free to grunt if this helps).

We’ll discuss some more about this weight room staple in the future, including ways to improve your back arch, how to work different muscles and ranges of motion, advanced techniques like the use of bands and/or chains and plenty of advice on troubleshooting.  For now, remember the 6 tips above and check your ego at the door.  When your form is good, you’ll be in the correct position to continue making progress and proudly answer the timeless gymrat inquiry.