Beyond the Bounds of Known

How often do you step outside of the realm of "known" in training and life? Check out this article by Michael Gray to see what I mean.

Beyond the Bounds of Known by Michael Gray

Get big or die tryin'.

How Strength Training Makes You A Better Person

A lot of people don't understand why some people push themselves so hard in the gym. What goes on under the bar and the lessons learned because of it extend far beyond the weight room. Check out this article by Michael Gray for more.

How Strength Training Makes You A Better Person by Michael Gray.

Get big or die tryin'.

Eat Like It's Your Job

I want to get big. Plain and simple. Right now I'm at about 228 and I want to get up to 240. Why? I don't really know why, I just know that I want to be there. I feel like at that weight I will have a more massive physique and I will be stronger. Will I be able to move better? Depends if my power output and relative strength are able to keep up with the mass increase. Will I be healthier? Eh, maybe, maybe not. Depends what I have to do to get to 240 and how well my frame can become acclimated to carrying around a roughly 5% increase in weight.

I don't know much about what life will be like once I get there, but I know that to get there I will have to eat disgusting amounts of food to the point of being regularly uncomfortable. Is it worth it? Right now it seems that way.

If you are trying to put on mass I'm not going to ask what you are doing in the weight room. I want to know what your nutrition is like. I want to know that you are eating like it's your job. For high school kids whose football scholarship aspirations fall on their ability to gain weight, they literally have to treat eating like another workout. That's just the way it is for a hard-gainer. Granted, eating correctly for your metabolic type will certainly help, but I hope you like calories because a ton of them will be heading your way.

So that's my advice. Want to get big? Eat like it's your job.

Get big or die tryin'.

Breaking Plateaus

Have you hit a plateau in your strength training? Regardless of how "plateau-proof" a program may seem, eventually a plateau is inevitable. One thing that I have found to really help me break through these moments is to drop my working max for all of my core lifts, or at least the ones I feel like I am stagnant in, by 10%. Doing this allows me to work with weights that are well within my strength capabilities while still feeling taxed during the training session. Using this number as my working max, I bump my working maxes up by 5 to ten pounds after I finish each phase, allowing me to slowly work back to where I was when I plateaued. While this may seem like I taking steps backwards, the mental and physical relief of not having to work with maximum weights every day allows me to start making progress again and come back to my original working maxes stronger than before.

Get big or die tryin'.

Do You Train?

Who out there works out and who out there trains? Check out this list by Adam Spizman to figure out if your time inside the gym and out makes the cut.

Top Ten Checklist: Do You Train? by Adam Spizman

Get big or die tryin'.

Improvements for ALL Athletes, Young and Old

Here is a great article that gets right to the point for training high school athletes. However, I strongly believe that these tips should be applied to ALL athletes, young and old, as well as the weekend warriors. See the article below by Adam Plagens, strength and conditioning coach for Saline High School, for these very important tips.

Improvements for High School Athletes by Adam Plagens

Get big or die tryin'.