Incorrect Squats – Avoid leaning forward and bending downwards. All the pressure comes down on your back which is where you don’t want it.

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Correct Squats – Sit back with the weight while keeping your body as upright as possible. Your thighs should end parallel with the floor.

Incorrect Bench Press – Don’t lift your heels off the floor or leave only your shoulders on the bench. This defeats the purpose of even doing the bench press.

Correct Bench Press – Plant your feet solidly into the ground and shorten up your back while keeping your butt on the bench.

Incorrect Pull-ups – Don’t use your momentum to lift yourself up.

Correct Pull-ups – Pull yourself up in a controlled manner and then slowly until your arms are straight. Pause and repeat focusing on the biceps.

Incorrect Dumbell Military Press – Stop lifting to hear a clank over your head.

Correct Dumbell Military Press – Lift the weights straight up and lower them straight down.

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Correct Your Weight Lifting Form

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1. Shoulder Shrugs – pull either a barbell or dumbells up in smooth controlled motions and then hold while you let your traps bear the burden.

2. Straight Ahead Shoulder Flies - These flies force the tops of your shoulder muscles to develop.  Lift above your shoulder to get a little extra out of them.

3. Clean and Jerk - This incorporates more than just your shoulders, but you can modify this lift to only include an upwards row and military press to hit your shoulders coming and going.  You won’t get much rest and your shoulders will burn intensely.

4. Sitting Alternating Dumbell Military Press – If you sit Indian-style while making these lifts, you’ll get no help from your legs and get a true test of how strong your shoulders are.  Touch the weight to your shoulder as long as you feel no pain.

5. Elevated Push-ups – Push-ups are great shoulder stabilizers but if you increase the elevation of your feet, you’ll put even more emphasis on the shoulder.

Mix in these 5 exercises to your workout and you’ll have well rounded, strong shoulders in no time.

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5 Killer Shoulder Exercises

Cardio: Cardio exercise is essential to chiseling your muscle. You’re basically melting the fat off your arms which in turn allows the muscle definition to shine through. The harder and more consistent you hit cardio, the better results you will see.

Diet: The saying “you are what you eat” has some meaning to it. If you’re a person that consumes a heavy carb, heavy fat diet, then it will be hard for you to get the cut look. Leaning up your diet will do wonders for your arms. Think light, lean, nutrient filled food like grilled chicken breast, fruits, vegetables, skim milk, and whole wheat bread. Stay away from milk shakes, tortillas, pizza, and other weighty food.

Exercises: The basic curl is a foundation but certainly not a stopping point. Use your common sense to hit different areas of your bicep and arm you want to cut up. Mix and match different degrees and angles of lifts as well as the weight and speed. For cuts, lean toward a medium challenge weight and push yourself with high reps and a slightly faster rep than normal

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Post from: EveryJoe

How to Cut Your Biceps

5 minute stretch
5 minutes jog/warm up
leg press 2×16 (medium challenge)
leg extensions 2×12 (medium challenge)
seated calf raises 2×16 (medium challenge)
squats 3×10 (challenging)
leg curls 2×12 (medium challenge)
reverse lunges 3×10 (very challenging)
seated jumps with 12 pound medicine ball – touch the sky 3×10 (very challenging)
leg abductors 2×12 (medium challenge)
squat thrusts w/ small dumbell 3×10 (very challenging)

When completing this workout, strive to challenge yourself for every last set. After 2 weeks, you will feel a distinct change in your body’s power. Don’t overwork yourself between difficult sets.

3×8 50 yard sprints (very challenging)
walk 8 minutes cool down

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Explosive Leg Workout

The first step is establishing your current 1 rep max, whether that is 135 lbs or 200 lbs.  From this, you’ll know just how far you need to go to get to 300 lbs.  With this information in mind, attempt to set a new max bench press every other chest workout and chart your progress so that you can see your results improving in black and white.  Remember that you’re building towards 300 and reaching that goal won’t happen after 1 or 2 workouts.

Next, vary your workouts to include both heavy and medium weight with many different exercises that stress the pectorals at different levels, stages, and degrees.  No matter what weight you use, keep pushing yourself to failure.  By the end of your sets, you should be struggling to finish, if at all.  Besides chest, you should also be hitting your triceps in a similar fashion as they are a big factor in how much you bench. As always, make sure you’re indulging in plenty of protein and rest so your muscles can grow and become stronger.

Another vital key in your progression to 300 lbs is to space out your workout days.  A common mistake of many beginners is overtraining.  While this sort of dedication is good to see, it is misplaced.  With the intensity your bench workouts will require of you, you should be limiting yourself to twice a week.

No matter how far below 300 you are, you’re really not that far away if you train hard and the right way.

For motivation, check out these impressive incline lifts:

Post from: EveryJoe

How to Bench Press 300 lbs.

One problem with weight belts is you get the most out of them if you have bad form. Another detractor is if you do suffer an injury while wearing a weight belt, the severity of the injury is usually more severe.

To increase the amount of weight you can lift without exerting yourself at near 100% level, strengthen your core muscles – particularly your lower back. When in the course of your regular workout routines, you can safely stay free of weight belts unless you push yourself to extremes, at which point you will want to consider it. It’s also a good idea if you have an existing back injury.

This is a good example of when you would want to use a weight belt:

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Do You Need to Wear a Weight Belt?

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Losing weight and becoming healthy helps you out in so many ways yet over 1/3 of US adults are obese are overweight.  Simply concluded, Americans act counter intuitive to their own self preservation and interest.

Our bodies are amazing biological machines that are efficient and self correcting, but they need help.  To assist your body now and later in life, stay active on a daily basis and try to include all major food groups in your everyday diet.

To reward yourself with the benefits of good health, you don’t have to be perfect in your diet or exercise, nor does it have to consume your life.  You just need to have some interest in helping yourself.

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Weight Loss Helps Kidneys

1. Machine Cable Cross Flies – This does a great job of squeezing the pecs and gives a unique resistance because of the cables. You can also adjust your starting point to work different parts of the muscle.

2. Incline Bench – Works your upper chest to the max.

3. Push-ups – Along with regular bench, the universal baseline for building up your chest.

4. Decline Dumbell Bench Press – One of the few exercises that really hits your lower pecs.

5. Dumbell Pullovers – Another one of the few exercises to hit the lower pecs that gives a great stretch in the process.

This video goes over some other great exercises:

Post from: EveryJoe

Best Chest Exercises

The ideal pre-workout meal comes 30 minutes prior to lifting weights and involves a small portion of complex carbohydrates to fuel your time in the gym. A small portion of rice or a piece of toast with a 1/2 banana or 1/2 an apple would be perfect. The goal is to give you energy, but not have your blood going to the digestive system. If your blood is helping digest your food, it is not delivering oxygen to the muscles.

Whatever you do, don’t go into a workout hungry. You should feel light on your feet and neither hungry nor full. Skip the large protein intake prior to a workout (a little is ok). You don’t need it going in.

Here is an alternative view on the before workout meal:

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What to Eat Before Lifting Weights

Another important aspect to your post workout meal isn’t just what you eat – it’s when you eat it.  You need to feed your muscles as soon as possible.  Ideally, this would come within 30 minutes or sooner.  The reason for the hurry is that remember food isn’t absorbed by your body immediately after eating – it takes time.

Thus, for protein, shakes are the best form because they absorb quickly and definitely beat any solid foods in a race.  Similarly, you want simple and not complex carbs for fast absorption.  Although there are many options, you can definitely bring ice cream into the mix and feel ok about doing it for the sake of your workout.

One recommendation is to put vanilla ice cream in your protein shake for a rich, creamy chocolate/vanilla ultimate protein and carb shake.

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Post from: EveryJoe

Ice Cream After a Workout?