Category Archives: Routines

“Everlasting Challenge” Training Routine

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Everlasting Challenge Training RoutineLately I have been really puzzled with coming up with a new theme for an article. After shuffling all the possible ideas, nothing still seemed to resonate with me. The solution came rapidly as always. Some time ago an interesting idea regarding structuring a training routine popped up in my mind. The only reason I didn’t want to share it yet was the fact that I was still testing it. “But why not?” – I thought.

Therefore, enter the “Everlasting Challenge” Training Routine.

The Approach

If you are impatient, here is the actual approach without unnecessary long intros: Continue reading →

How to Substitute Exercises Like a Pro

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Stacked Kettlebell Clean

People often ask me different variations of the same question: “How can I substitute this exercise for something else?”. You may also be in such situation (and, additionally, I get really bored to type the same thing over and over), that is why I decided to address this problem with whole article. Besides, I have couple of interesting things to tell (or not).

Who Is This Article for?

This information is for people that fall into one of the following categories:

  • You travel and often find yourself in sub-optimal environment for strength training (gyms with 2 kg dumbbells);
  • You want to use certain training implement, but don’t want to screw your program up;
  • You want to try certain program, but don’t have all the necessary implements;
  • You are just curious.

First of all you need to understand… Continue reading →

“One Skill a Day” Training Program

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Sergio Oliva PosingHave you ever had this feeling that your training is going nowhere? Are you still torturing your body with the same old program you were using for last 5 years of training? Are you sincerely amazed with the lack of results? Ok, enough questions. We’ve both definitely been in such situation. You are doing 3 full-body workouts per week for a really long time. Then they just stop working. You get an enlightenment and try some sort of Upper/Lower Split.  Your gains skyrocket to stratosphere and your reason to live seems to be restored. You think that you’ve found The Program. However, after decent amount of time the story repeats itself. You get frustrated (and maybe depressed) one more time. What to do? There are lots of ways out. I’d like to discuss one of them today. What if you could train every day (or almost every day), and get outstanding results? Seems too good to be true, but my solution fits the previous sentence perfectly. Enter “One Skill a Day” Training Program.

One Skill a Day? Continue reading →

5 x 5 Strength Training Template: How to Do It Right

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Reg Park 5x5 Strength RoutineRecently I got lots of e-mails on programming. All of the people wanted me to analyze their programs and say what I think about them. Some of them even wanted me to try their program. I try to answer all of my e-mails. But I get really bored to write the same thing over and over again. So I decided to write another post on basics. Specifically on 5 x 5 strength template. I really like this approach and always amazed how it gets lost and returns, then again gets lost, then returns again etc. But first of all, let’s take a look at some history of this famous training template.

5 x 5 Strength Training Template in History and Its Variations

Well, I don’t really know whether old-timers used exactly 5 sets of 5 reps. I think, that they came up with something like this at some point. Continue reading →

Top 3 Strength Routines for Beginners

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Steve Reeves Military Press“What routine is the best?”

“What routine will build muscle?”

“What routine will build strength?”

I get these questions all the time. Firstly, there’s no such thing as “the best routine”. For beginners, the best routine is the one you stick to for long enough to get results. Secondly, everyone is different. Working as personal trainer, I see this all the time. People find crappy programs on the internet and follow them blindly in hope of results. And most of the time they fail miserably. All because generic programs don’t work. They don’t take into account your biomechanics, your conditions, your performance capacity etc. The only program that will work for you is personalized one, tailored to your current goals and circumstances. So programs available on the internet should be considered as templates rather than actual training programs. So today I’d like to share with you my current top 3 strength routines for beginners. Continue reading →

Rough Strength Basics: How to Build Muscle?

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How to Build Muscle?Here’s the second part of Rough Strength Basics series of articles. In case you missed part 1, it explored the theme of how to gain strength and you can read it here. So today’s post is going to be, as you probably already found out, on how to build muscle. Muscle building is an interesting topic by itself. I’ll try to cover just the basics of it in this post.

What Is Muscle Building?

Muscle building or, as geeks say, hypertrophy is an increase in the size of a muscle through an increase in the size of its component cells. It occurs due to the principle of supercompensation. This principle states that muscle increases its size as reaction to stress and microtrauma induced by exercise. In simpler words, we exercise, we totally blast our muscles, our body thinks “what the fuck? I better be bigger next time this asshole will torture me like that” and grows.

There are several stages of muscle building process: microtrauma, compensation and supercompensation. Continue reading →

Rough Strength Basics: How to Gain Strength

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How to Gain StrengthMajority of people that are interested in strength training are concerned with wrong things. They think too much about exercise machines, biceps curls, what training gloves to use, what is better: barbells or dumbbells, when to train: in the morning or in the evening, or maybe in the afternoon? What to eat pre-workout, intra-workout and post-workout, ‘anabolic windows’, what split to use, what supplements to use, should I train biceps with triceps or separately? Holy crap, these questions make me want to puke in the mouth of the person who asks them. The best thing you can do to your training is to concentrate on BASICS and forget everything else for 3-5 years straight. So I decided to write some stuff on basics of rough strength training. Here’s the first article.

Continue reading →