Hypertrophy Training: Rules to Live by When Muscle Hypertrophy is Your Goal

Hypertrophy training – in an untamed pursuit to build a better body, we’re rarely concerned about the long-term or how we plan to get from point A to point B; we simply want to experience a transformation.  We want maximal muscle growth in minimal time and we’ll do anything to appear how we believe we’re supposed to when gazing upon the reflection staring back at us.

The pursuit may seem vain to many, but to those who can relate – it goes much deeper.  The maximal muscle hypertrophy we desire is often a result of our competitive drive to reach new heights or the unconscious self-doubt (gasp) we impose upon ourselves.

Sure, for some it’s pure vanity and that’s fine too; there’s nothing wrong with a little textbook narcissism now and again.  However, to understand something fully, we sometimes must start at the end result and work backward.  Therefore, to better understand hypertrophy training, in this case, from an anecdotal standpoint, we’re going to look at a few trainees who’ve made major strides despite slightly different training philosophies and approaches. [Read more...]

The Law of Diminishing Returns

Photo Credit: Caitlinator

The law of diminishing returns, put simply is an economic law that states if one aspect of production is kicked up a notch while everything else remains static or constant, the returns will eventually decrease after a certain point.  Thus, sometimes doing more work or giving more effort will yield a negative result as opposed to a positive one.

Since I’m not very well versed in economics, that’s about all you’ll be hearing from me on this topic, however if you’re interested in that type of thing, I’d recommend checking out MD’s blog, studenomics. [Read more...]

Bill Starr (MadCow) 5×5 Intermediate Routine

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Something was brought to my attention a few weeks ago.  A reader sent a quick email to notify me of some broken links they’d found.  In past articles when discussing training, I’ve referenced and linked to a very popular 5×5 training program often referred to as the MadCow 5×5.  It’s an intermediate program by Bill Starr that focuses on weekly linear progress and is very well suited for the experienced trainee who’s gotten much stronger but struggling to make consistent strength gains well past their newbie phase. [Read more...]

Working the Non-Mirror Muscles Part II – Injury Prevention

image(sort of) credit: Zuzana

In part I, I wrote about how most people fail to train the muscles they don’t see.  I also got off on a bit of a tangent about how sometimes we(especially men) think we are training for sex appeal, when in reality we’re just trying to be bigger and better than the next dude.

In today’s installment, I will explain the role that training the non-mirror muscles plays in warding off injuries or at least preventing them.

In my opinion, the most important point of balancing out your training protocol is injury prevention.  If you’ve been participating in strength training or bodybuilding for any decent amount of time, the chances of experiencing an injury are highly likely.  The beauty of proper training and attention to detail is that you can vastly decrease your chances of an unintentional layoff. [Read more...]