Weight lifting is great for your well being and all around fitness, but it can’t hit everything.  And you’ll realize this when you try exploring into other fitness activities that will help hit muscles that you don’t get to in weightlifting.  Some of the top all around strength building are the following activities.
Judo – Judo is a martial arts (I think it qualifies as an art at least) that involves a lot of ground work and taking people to the ground and exerting control over them.  You’ll be struggling against someone’s else strength for most of the time and this …read more

Over the years, a lot of medical opinions change.  One of these opinions involves whether or not weight lifting increases blood pressure.  Weight Lifting actually does not increase your blood pressure in the the long run.  It actually lowers it because you have more muscle and your heart doesn’t have to work as hard.  You will increase your blood pressure in the interim will lifting weights but this is normal.  You will want to make sure not to hold your breath.
The “ideal” blood pressure is 120/80 or less and just yesterday I had mine taken and I was 120/78 so …read more

Probably. An article from UPI suggests you can contribute to baldness by weight lifting.  The logic is that the weight lifting increases your testosterone immediately after a workout.  Following that, your testosterone will drop which converts into a hormone which causes hair follicles and roots  to shrink.
Say it aint so.  Could my weight lifting be hurting my hair?  Yeah, probably.  My hair is thinning and I’ve already lost a lot of hair follicles.  Of course my grandpa was bald so I have genetics at play too.
The research is there, but then again it’s not full proof.  Things have a …read more

As Summer draws to a close, my goal is to finish strong with an intense 3 week workout.  I’m researching the best way to go about it right now but I have an idea on how I want to structure it.  Here is my rough plan:
Each day contains 2 workouts, a morning and an evening workout.
Morning is 1:10 only weight lifting.  Evening is 50:00 running and cardio drills with 20:00 of ab work.
So the workouts combine to 2 hours and 20 minutes and will keep my metabolism running on high.  The idea is to keep it as high intensity as …read more

First, thanks goes to Sean at MyStrongMedicine.com for commenting on the how long should my workout be blog. Agree or disagree – it is really nice to get a sincere comment every now and then that adds to the blog. On this note, Sean’s fitness blog is a solid read and may be worthy of your RSS.
For today’s blog, I’m harking back to when I thought 200 lbs was amazing. I remember when my uncle told me he benched 190 during high school, I was so impressed. Back then that kind of weight seemed so lofty. …read more

Weight lifting isn’t a dangerous activity if you employ the proper precautions such as spotter, comfortable weight, stretching, preparation. However, not all of these precautions are used all the time and you can get yourself in real trouble. This blog covers some of the common precarious positions and/or predicaments involved in weight lifting.
Barbell Military Press – One of the absolute most dangerous exercises. If you’re lifting a barbell full of weight and you suddenly lose balance backwards, you can snap your arms or have the weight fall on your head. Besides lifting less weight, you can …read more

I like lifting weights on my own sometimes, but others I wish I could go back in time to when I had a good weight lifting partner. So what comprise the qualities of a good workout partner? You should know these before you unwittingly combine forces with someone that hinders, not helps you.

Comparable strength and ability to you – Ideally your partner will have similar strength as you.  Pairing with someone far stronger with you and you’ll find you’re constantly trying to play catch up while you slow them down.  If someone isn’t on your level, you’ll be …read more

Being disappointed in your results happens in weight lifting. As fun as it is to realize gains every 2-4 weeks, inevitably you have to know that your improvements will slow down and eventually stop. This isn’t being pessimistic, it’s just realistic part of physical nature. What it doesn’t signal is that your total overall growth has to stop.
When I hit a huge wall when I finally got to bench pressing 225 lbs, I was searching for answers. Before it seemed that whenver I applied myself, I made gains and lifted more. I was still using …read more

Many people see a big muscular guy and comment, “Wow I wouldn’t want to fight him.” As intimidating as stronger individuals may seem, strength translates to ability to fight as much as skinny means you can’t fight. It’s true brute strength is a great advantage in a skirmish, but because so many weight lifters neglect other facets of training, they’re lacking beyond muscles.
I’ll use Matt from Operacion Repo as an example again. Here’s a video of Matt in action:
As is the case in the video, Matt’s first reaction is almost always to wind up and push as …read more

Every now and then everybody gets dinged up in some form or fashion. The knee, hamstring, back, shoulder, wrist, neck, ankle can range from sore to nagging to downright painful. Lately I’ve had a little lower back stiffness, a nagging knee, and some pain in my shoulder and wrist. No matter what the injury or quasi-injury, my thought process stays the same.
First, I determine whether something is just there or whether it’s a new occurrence. For example, I have a good back but I have built muscle over some problems that happened when I was …read more