There’s a ton of evidence to directly support that claim, as well as the more general: exercise makes animals smarter (their brains work better) and more effective at navigating their environments (their bodies work better).

What about specific, practical evidence of this revelation?  Actually, why should it be considered a ‘revolution’?  It’s pretty clear that the mind and body work together.  Until very recently, we relied almost entirely upon our physical prowess for survival in the wild.

Here’s a really easy example from my life:  I fall down a lot less and am generally able to perform both delicate and more brutish placement of objects now than I was before I started training.  In English: I’m better at moving and manipulating objects in space than I was before I started lifting weights.  My numbers in the five main barbell lifts plus dumbbell and kettlebell variations, really every single movement I do now is stronger, and the process of moving these weights has both physically and mentally prepared me to more carefully move (objects) through space.

So lifting heavy shit makes me stronger and more coordinated, both because my body is better capable of holding and moving things, and that my mind goes through a sort of checklist (shoulders tight, thumb over the bar, valsalva, sit back . . . bend over while standing on your left foot, twist your torso over the dryer corner, use the wooden spoon to bat those treats back toward the front).

That last example is a good one, cos it shows that although I’m certain that weight training has been instrumental in this progress, I also realize that by using good form (read: the appropriate amount of full ROM work, which can vary greatly depending on experience) and the mobility work I do every workout has kept me basically injury free (although two of the callouses on my left hand tore off during a record rack pull today).

Then again, my martial arts instructor was impressed with my ability to consistently roll out of throws and fall practice where I appeared to be in major neck-injury-risk territory.  I probably owe that to all the hours I spent in the back yard and my basement wrestling with friends.  But I played literally thousands of hours of basketball in college, and there’s definitely a difference over the past couple of years.  I have studied weight training and nutrition far more than I ever listened to my coaches as a kid, so that probably has something to do with it too.  In effect, weight training has taught me to slow down, organize and prioritize my plan for action, and achieve the goal by adding confidence to my physical performance on par with my intellect.  I sound like a frickin douche bag if you read that wrong, but I hope you understand that I’m a work in progress and this is just a little something I want to pass along to the readers: recognize that the step-by-step processes in weight training can boost your ability in pretty much every single thing you go to do.

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!

A friend of mine asked me a little while back about which gym he should join. He lives amidst an uncontrollable suburban sprawl, and though there are a ton of gyms in the metro area, they all seem somehow compromised. He narrowed his choices to two options, but one is relatively expensive and the other only has one power rack (but it does have three smith machines ). I told him to move, find a home near a gym of a harder core (my recent cross-country move was heavily weighted by the search for a well-equipped powerlifter-friendly gym), but instead he joined the expensive health club.

If you don’t want to be stuck in a place that threatens to kick you out for doing anything resembling getting really strong and muscular, then it might be time to consider equipping the garage or basement with your home gym. In this multipart series starting today, you’ll learn the ins and outs of the dos and don’ts of buying home gym equipment.

When starting from scratch, the first choice for strength training is an easy one: barbells. Barbells allow incremental loading, so you can lift as a beginner and steadily increase the resistance as you move toward mastering the iron sport. A good beginner set should have the following:

One (1) Olympic barbell, 20kg/44lbs (some are 45lbs, and these are fine. In fact, there are some that weigh more than the standard ~45lbs, but we’ll discuss those in the future)

Two (2) spring clips. You need these to keep the plates balanced on the bar (*though home training can present situations where it’s CRITICAL that you DON’T use the clips whilst bench pressing. More on this in next week’s installment). In the absence of weight clips, or if yours break, you can use any kind of clamps that will fit securely on the 2” diameter collars. Just make sure that whatever clips you use, they’re symmetrical.

Four to forty (4-40) 45lb plates. You probably won’t need to load your bar with upwards of 1000 lbs. (and when you do, you’ll probably be using 100lb plates), but you should start with at least four. Four 45s gives you 225lbs including the barbell, which is the bare minimum smaller trainers will need for their novice training programs. Most people should probably get six or eight to start with (always buy weight plates in pairs of identical brand plates), but four can be a good start, especially when you also get:

Two (2) 25lb plates. Most gyms have 35s, but you don’t really need those when you get:

Four (4) 10lb plates. Getting four 10s will save you money by alleviating the need for 35s, plus it allows you to add 20lbs on each side, rather than 25 (10 extra pounds can be a big difference once you start working your way up the strength ladder).

Two (2) 5lb plates. Same as the 10s, but sometimes they’re too heavy.

Two (2) 2.5lb plates. Again, very useful for gradual increases.

Fractional plates. Now, you can buy these, and companies like Iron Woody make very high quality plates in weights as low as a quarter pound. What I did when I trained on the Starting Strength template is buy six (6) 2” internal diameter washers. I read this somewhere online and took my kitchen scale to the local Fastenal. As it turns out, the washers weigh around 10oz each. This is perfect, since adding one on each side allows you to add 1.25lbs. When you’re reaching the limit of your newbie gains on lifts like the overhead press, the ability to add weights as small as 1.25lbs helps you to continue making linear progress. In short: buying fractional plates makes you bigger and stronger, faster. The six washers plus tax only cost me about $12. They might look at you strange at the store, but since you’re confident, it won’t matter. It’s important to weigh them there before you buy, because they can be off by several grams. It’s critical to load barbells symmetrically, so make sure all of them weigh the same amount. I had to go through an entire bin (about 50 washers) to find the 6 that all weighed out identically, but knowing that I was helping to build a balanced, powerful physique made it well worth the effort.

Next week, we’ll discuss the other necessary tools for basic barbell training, plus tips on how to make the most of what you’ve got.

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

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Squat (5x3)

Bench Press (5x3)

Deadlift (5x1)

Heavy abs (5-15x3)

Day 2

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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.

Big bulging biceps!  They’re the symbol of strength in our culture, yet few have them.  Plenty have tried countless curl variations, only to find that they’re not going anywhere.  Perhaps they should have started with pullups and chinups.  Pull-ups and chin-ups (chins) are one of the best ways to increase your grip, pulling strength and upper body size.  They work your forearms, biceps and lattisimus dorsi (lats), plus chinups work the long head of the triceps.  Having strong lats helps to balance the strength you’ll gain by increasing your bench press, plus strong lats actually help you push the bar off of your chest.
Sure, you could take the easy way out and do cable pulldowns or some other machine exercise.  Our philosophy on strength training carries over to life, and it’s that anything worth doing is probably a little harder than the alternatives, but it probably yields better results.  In the case of pullups or chins vs pulldowns, it’s a unanimous decision in favour of the former.  Pullups and chins require stabilization and move your body through space, whereas pulldowns and machines allow you to avoid this work.  Machines are even worse than cable pulldowns, because they lock you into a range of motion that completely prevents your body from stabilizing itself and it puts you at a greater risk of injury by forcing that path irrespective of your individual anatomy.  Strength built with pullups and chins carries over to pulldowns, but the opposite effect is far less substantial.  Since we’re going to do the more useful exercises, let’s make sure we’re doing them in the best way possible:
1.    Grab the bar at shoulder width.  You want to have the bar closer to your fingers than in the bench and overhead presses (those exercises need the bar to be closer to your palm/wrist).
2.    Take a deep breath in, push your chest up, pull your shoulder blades back.  Your shoulders need to stay back and your chest must stay up for the entire set.
3.    Pull your body up toward the bar by flexing your biceps and lats.  Keep pulling until your chin passes the bar.  It’s even better if you can have the bar touch your chest, but for beginners this will be tough.  Only count reps where your chin clears the bar.
4.    Lower yourself in a slow, controlled manner, all the way to a dead hang.  Your arms should be straight at the bottom, which may require you to keep your knees bent to avoid touching the ground.  As with clearing the bar with your chin, pullup and chinup reps don’t count unless you lower yourself to a dead hang.

That’s it for pullups/chinups.  Pretty simple, right?  We’ll go into depth more later on variations you can use to improve your numbers and strength, including variations on this time-tested classic.  For now, work on getting up to the point where you can do 15 reps with bodyweight.  At that level, you’ll have a fantastic level of relative strength and be ready for all kinds of new techniques.

I’ll give you $20 bucks if you can name an exercise that is as widely misunderstood and commonly executed as poorly as the power clean.  It’s a staple of high school football weight training routines, yet for some reason, many coaches never bother to teach their kids correct form.  It’s just like the quarter squats these seemingly well-meaning ‘mentors’ espouse: poor form to boost the numbers.  If you’ve been reading our other articles, you notice that we preach the gospel of good form because it both puts you in the strongest position and helps you avoid injury.  We’re going to dramatically simplify the power clean here today so that you can learn how to do it, possibly in one session:
1.    Review your deadlifting form.  Until you can deadlift perfectly, you need to focus on that.  Power cleans start with a deadlift, so it’s critical that you understand how to do those before attempting cleans.
2.    Start the progression by performing Power Shrugs.  This is a deadlift where you shrug hard at the top while jumping.  Start with about 50% of your deadlift 1RM and try sets of 3.  You want to pull the weight smoothly from the floor and explode as you pull it up.  NEVER FLEX YOUR ARMS.  It’s ok if they fly up a little, especially with lighter weights, but you must never flex your biceps to pull the weight up.  When the bar is halfway up the thighs, jump and perform a powerful shrug.  If the weight is too light, you might actually leave the ground, so keep adding a little more until it’s challenging.
3.    Once you get up to a weight where the power shrug is difficult, start in the other direction by dropping the bar down from the rack position.  At first, simply walk up to the bar at chest-height with your arms stretched out in front of you like a mummy, zombie, or whatever monsters don’t have good elbow mobility these days.  Get under the bar and see what it feels like to have it rest on the front of your shoulders.  Once you remember how that feels, step back, put your hands on the bar at the same width as your deadlift, and then bend the elbows under so you can step to the position we were in before where the bar is on your shoulders.  If you do that whilst keeping your hands on the bar, you’ll notice that you probably have to let go of your grip and let the bar roll back onto you fingers.  This is fine, and probably preferred.  Once you can hold the bar on your shoulders with your fingers on it and keep your elbows parallel to the ground, take it out of the rack and practice dropping it down from that position.  If you want, you can simply curl the bar back up to the hooks, get in the rack position again and drop it.
4.    Now that you know the rack position, we’re going to try a hang clean.  Deadlift the bar up to just above your knees, then stop.  Your butt will be back, knees bent, and you must keep your shoulders over the bar.  From there, jump up and shrug powerfully.  If you do this correctly, the bar will fly up, and your elbows will almost automatically whip underneath the bar.  As mentioned above, NEVER EVER FLEX YOUR BICEPS WHILST CLEANING!  Doing so is one of the easiest ways to spend some time in the hospital, some more time in physical therapy, and even more time paying off your surgery bills.  Think of your arms as ropes.  They simply connect your powerfully shrugging shoulders to the bar below.  When you shrug, the ropes will have some slack in them, but the end will find its way to your shoulders.
5.    Now that you can do a hang clean, put it all together and perform a full power clean.  Do a power shrug, but this time, explode and whip your elbows beneath the bar so you catch it on your shoulders.

And that’s the power clean.  There are plenty of schools of thought on teaching it: top down, top up, hybrid, hell, some Olympic coaches require that their lifters practice various other exercises for months before trying the clean.  In my experience, this is the easiest way to get it done.  I had been trying to learn it for a while, but it never made sense to me.  Then one day, a strength coach from my alma mater Virginia Tech was training a young wrestling recruit at the off-campus gym where I trained.  He showed me the method I described to you above and I learned how to clean with good form in about 25 minutes.

The overhead press probably has more athletic benefits than any other upper body exercise.  Despite what you may have believed growing up in a culture that reveres big biceps and bench press numbers, the challenge of pressing heavy weights over one’s head is one of the most rewarding exercises possible.  You gain strength in the shoulders, arms and upper back, not to mention the abs, lower back and entire torso.  One reason many people incur injuries whilst benching is because they’re imbalanced, but ensuring that your overhead press is at least 2/3 of your bench will alleviate most if not all of these problems.  The key with pressing, as with all exercises, is to utilize correct form to both a) maximize your biomechanical advantage and therefore strength, and b) to prevent injuries.  Let’s discuss how to do it the right way:

1.    Set the hooks in a rack to mid-chest height.  This is the same height you’d use while setting up for squats, so if you’re following a basic barbell training method like Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength, you can simply leave the hooks where you placed them for your squats.
2.    Approach the bar with a shoulder-width stance.  Touch the bar with your chest and grab at equal distance on either side so that your hands are just outside your shoulders.  Push the bar down into the pad of your hand, just as with the bench press.  We want to be holding the bar with a vice-tight grip as close to the wrist as possible, not up near the fingers.  Also, the wrists must stay straight.  There’s going to be a slight angle between your hand and forearm, but it must stay just like that.  We want to remember to keep the forearms under the bar at all times, so make a fist right now and notice how your hand points up ever so slightly, and how you will position the forearm and wrist so that the bar is resting on the heel of the palm and pad below the thumb as an extension of the forearm.  In other words, the bar should be right on top of the middle of your wrist.
3.    Push your chest up and elbows forward.  As I mentioned above, the forearms must be vertical under the bar at all times, which makes the elbow slightly in front of the bar when it’s resting on your chest.  Look forward at a fixed spot on the wall in front of you.  I like to use a piece of chalk to mark a spot on the wall that I stare at for the entire set.  If you absolutely have to press in front of a mirror, get a piece of paper and tape it to the mirror so that you have something static to stare at during the press.  DO NOT LOOK INTO THE MIRROR WHILST PRESSING!
4.    Bend your knees slightly and dip under the bar, then stand up straight, take a step back and resume the shoulder-width stance.
5.    We want to have the bar travel in a vertical path, so you’ll need to lean back ever so slightly.  Instead of hyperextending the back to lean backwards, we like to think of shifting ever so slightly from the hips and/or ankles.  Either way, the legs must remain locked throughout the entire movement.  Using your knees to bounce the bar up is a push press, and for our purposes in overhead pressing is cheating.  With your legs locked, you can lean back just a little bit so that your face is out of the way of the bar as you press it up.  Take a deep breath and hold it as you push the bar straight up.
6.    As the bar clears your head, push your entire body forward under it.  You are not bending forward at the waste, pushing your head forward or anything else.  It’s as simple as pushing the body forward under the bar.  This will add stability to the lift and put you in the proper position for finishing the press.
7.    As you get ready to lock your arms out, you should have pushed your body through to the point where the bar is pressed directly overhead, in line with your spine.  It’s important to push the body through rather than simply pushing the bar backwards.  At lockout, shrug up powerfully, as though the movement never ends and you’re going to keep pushing it up forever.  In actuality, you just need to push it up as high as you can, including a shrug, and hold it there long enough to take in a deep breath.
8.    Let the bar descend in a controlled fashion and lean back slightly to accommodate the vertical bar path down to your chest.  As with the bench press, you lowered the weight from lockout, so you can utilize the stretch reflex to make the reps from the second onward more powerful than the first.  Though we call it a ‘bounce’, be careful to stay tight and don’t do this sloppily.  A good rule of thumb is to let the bar touch your chest no harder than you’d want to drop it on you if your chest were made of glass.

So that’s the (overhead) press.  It’s critical to master this exercise in order to balance your upper body and ensure healthy shoulders.  You might not see too many other people doing this at your gym, but then again, you might not ever have to go to the hospital for a torn pec, either.

Chances are, you know someone with chronic back pain.  Americans spent a staggering $86 billion (eighty-six billion dollars!) on spinal treatments in 2005.  The interesting thing is that this increase in spending seems to have had no positive impact, and researchers concluded that spinal problems actually *increased* during the decade that witnessed a 65% hike in back remedy spending.  Having worked with plenty of friends and clients and discussed the topic with peers, it seems clear that this Madoff of a wasted investment could have been solved by one simple word: deadlift.

The deadlift strengthens the posteriour chain, stabilizes the spine, and when you learn the proper technique, it prevents hernias, ruptured discs and other debilitating injuries.  The key in that last sentence is 'when you learn the proper technique.'  And that time is now.

Deadlifting is as simple as pulling a loaded barbell from a dead stop on the ground, but there are a few keys you MUST know before trying this essential movement:

1.    The bar needs to be at mid-shin height.  This is accomplished quite naturally when using the standard 45lb/20kg plate, but plenty of newbies will find a bar loaded with one of these on each side a bit too challenging for their first attempts.  Other than using bumper plates or other specially designed plates of the same size, the best way to get the bar to the right height is by propping it up evenly on both sides.  You can simply stack a few plates on either side or use something else like plyboard, mats, etc.
2.    Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and ever so slightly pointing outward, so that the bar lines up with the midfoot.  We’ll go into much greater detail in the future about why this midfoot position is critical, but for now, just stand so that half of the laces on your flat-soled shoes (weightlifting shoes, Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars, etc. . . . something with no cushioning) are visible on either side of the bar when you look down.  This will put the bar somewhere between 2” to 4” away from your shins whilst standing upright.
3.    Bend over to grasp the bar by pushing your butt back first, then bending the knees.  You must keep your back neutral or ‘straight’, which is to say that the back should keep the same natural curve you have whilst standing.  The tilt forward will all come from the bend in the hips.
4.    Grasp the bar with both hands just outside your knees.  For heavier sets, use an alternating grip of one hand facing toward you and the other away.  You can also use this alternate grip in conjunction with the hook grip, which is performed by looping the thumb around the bar and under the middle finger.  When lifting, the pressure of the weight pushes the thumb into the middle finger, creating a tighter grip than if you simply grasped around the bar.  You MUST keep your arms straight, because deadlifting by jerking the bar or flexing your biceps during the movement can and will result in torn biceps at heavier weights.
5.    Squeeze your chest up and align your body so that your shoulder blades are over the bar.  From the side, this will look like the shoulders are in front of the bar, but this is because the shoulder blades appear further back than the front of the shoulder when in the correct position.  Your shins should now be in contact with the bar.
6.    With your weight on your heels, flex your hips to bring the weight up, keeping your back flat.  As the weight travels up, use your lats to press the straight arms back toward your legs so that the bar is in contact with your legs the entire way up.  Your knees will naturally start to straighten at the appropriate time when you initiate from the hips.
7.    End by standing up straight with the knees and hips locked.  Do not shrug the bar, roll your shoulders back or hyperextend the lower back.  Once you stand up ‘at attention’, you’re done.

Now that you’re armed with these tips on correct deadlifting form, you can apply them and begin to notice amazing gains in strength and lean mass.

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.

Quick . . . what’s the single best exercise in the world?  You’d be right if you responded that it takes a variety of exercises to build a balanced physique, but if there was only one that you could do for the rest of your life, it’s an easy choice.  Squats are the ‘king of exercises’ for a variety of reasons.  First off, they work your entire body, from the upper back all the way down to your calves.  It also elicits a hormonal response that causes total body growth like nothing else.  It’s a scientific fact that even if you did no upper body exercises, your arms would grow from squatting (*don’t be dumb – use a variety of exercises to balance your strength and musculature).

Since we know that squats are required for any serious strength training regimen, it’s critical that we learn how to do them correctly.  Luckily, once you know how to do it, you will have established a foundation upon which an entire lifetime of strength can be built upon, so let’s take a look at the key points:

1. Set the hooks in a power rack such that the bar lines up at mid-chest height (at the nipples or close is best).  This height will also be correct when you move into overhead presses, so take note.
2. Unrack the bar by stepping under it, retracting the shoulder blades and grabbing it with your thumbs over the top, rather than around the bar.  Here are the keys to ensuring proper bar positioning:

• Always center your back on the bar.  The middle of most bars have knurling (the rough, grippy stuff), so you can align your sternum to the knurling and then duck under to get there.  As for the hands, grab at equal width with the thumbs over the top and hold them when you duck and step under the bar.  You can use the rings between the sections of knurling as a handy way to ensure equal spacing.  Keep your wrists straight as you step through.  The wrists must remain straight throughout the set.
• Tighten the shoulder blades and push your chest up.  This provides a solid platform for the bar to rest upon and will allow your muscles to grow in a way that naturally facilitates excellent posture.
• Allow the bar to rest low on the shoulders.  This might feel strange at first, especially if you’ve been squatting with a high bar position, but the benefits will become clear when you . . .
• Push your elbows back with the wrists straight.  This will ‘lock’ the bar into position under your hands and on top of a sort of ‘shelf’ created by the rear deltoids and retracted shoulder blades.
• Take a shoulder-width stance with your weight on your heels.  Notice that you’ll be in a partial squat to start.  We prefer this because at the end of sets, you’ll be tired and it’s far safer and easier to walk the bar forward and set it down in the hooks than trying to tip-toe back.
• Keep your head and neck at a neutral angle, but push the chin back slightly and look at the ground.  Pushing the chin in further solidifies the shoulder ‘rack’ and will encourage great posture.  This tip is especially useful for computer workers, who tend to crane forward many hours a day and carry this cro-magnon look out into their daily lives.  Think of holding a tennis ball between the chin and chest by simultaneously pushing the chest up and pushing the chin backwards.
• Stand up straight with your weight on your heels and take one small step backwards.  Look down to ensure that you have an evenly-placed shoulder-width stance with toes pointed slightly outward, then assume a static gaze about six feet in front.  Looking down whilst keeping the head and relatively neutral helps to encourage hip drive, which is the key to strong squatting.
• Keep everything tight and get ready to squat:

1. Take a deep breath from the belly and hold it.  Sit back as though you were squatting to a toilet or bench, pushing the knees out so that they track with the hips and toes.  The knees must stay in a line with the toes and hips.  THE KNEES MUST NOT BEND INWARD!  If your knees bend in, you’re putting yourself at an unreasonable risk for injury, not utilizing all of the available muscles to power the movement and are probably using too much weight.
2. Keep everything tight and move down until the hip joint is just below a point where it’s parallel to the top of the knee.
3. Drive the hips up, keeping the back tight.  About halfway up, you can breathe out forcefully, grunt or scream to help push the weight.  If you work out at a gym that discourages this kind of ‘intimidating’ behaviour, consider finding a new place to train that will actually let you do what’s necessary to get strong.

So that’s the basic form for low bar squatting.  We prefer low bar position to high bar because it is better for developing the entire posteriour chain, including the upper, mid and lower back, plus the glutes, hamstrings, hip flexors and calves.  The high bar squat focuses more on the quadriceps, but the low bar hits them, plus everything I mentioned above.  Check back with HOPEisSTRENGTH for more on troubleshooting, advanced techniques and everything else that will make you uncommonly strong.