This can be explained by a person who is engaged in bodybuilding, the process of building and sculpting muscle is one that requires intense focus and commitment. A dedicated diet and exercise regime is absolutely imperative to achieving bodybuilding goals. And as important as diet is, bodybuilding exercise is even more important.

Exercise helps bodybuilders trim body fat, build muscle, and sculpt and chisel the body in order to achieve ultimate bodybuilding goals – including participation in competition. Bodybuilding exercise – like any kind of fitness routine – should include a combination of cardiovascular exercise, core work, and weight training in order to be most effective. But for bodybuilders, exercise of this kind is taken to the next level with a focus and intensity that helps them achieve their significant physical goals.

In order to embark on effective exercise, it is first necessary to set out a schedule that will help you meet your goals. This is where a reputable gym can come into play. Not only do gyms offer a bevy of equipment necessary to bodybuilding exercise, but they give customers access to personal trainers who can help you set and implement your fitness goals.

For instance, a personal trainer can help you to determine how best to structure your workout week; this may include weight training on one or two particular muscle groups one day and other muscle groups the next; as well as the implementation of cardiovascular work and programs such as Pilates and yoga to improve flexibility and strengthen the body’s core. Exercise helps a lot for a person to remain fit.

But most importantly, personal trainers and the gyms in which they work can provide guidance in performing exercise in the safest way possible. Exercise – especially weight training – will get you nowhere if you have poor technique. In order to maximize your results and avoid injury, bodybuilding exercise must be performed with the proper technique.

Bodybuilding exercise can transform your physical appearance and elevate your competitive performance to the next level. But be sure to approach these exercises with proper education and attention to safety in order to best meet your fitness goals

Here are some useful tips for exercise:

Body Building is usually affiliated with Big Muscles. Body building will change one’s body and mind if approached in a reasonable way.

1: Set Your Sets

Rests between sets should be minimized to around 60-90 seconds for cardiovascular purposes and better muscle voluminizing effect. Sets should be 6-15 cycles for each exercise.

2: How Much Rest?

Sleep is a health necessity that is too often ignored. Our society pushes us to sleep less and accomplish more, but there is a point when all of that hard work and no rest can become counterproductive. Sometimes rest is what is required in order to become better. one part of the whole, the rest will also tend to move towards a more healthy and fit state as well.

3: Work Your Workout

There are two types of muscle building workouts that will either allow you to gain muscle mass or tone your existing muscle. The goal of a low rep, high weight muscle building workout is to increase muscle mass, or plump up the muscle to its greatest volume.



By: John Howard

About the Author:

Body Weight Routine

Those of you that train with weights know the importance of doing the proper lifts to hit the muscles and make them grow. This is equally true for beginners, although many beginners may not be aware of the lifts they need to be doing to make the fastest progress. These are the core lifts that stimulate your entire body to get stronger and grow and they should be part of every lifters routine.

To build strength and size the core exercises you need to be doing are squats, presses, rows and deadlifts. These are the lifts that will help you pack on muscle and boost your strength as quickly as possible.

For overall muscular development, squats are the undisputed king of lifts. Yes, they are primarily a leg exercise and they will increase your leg power amazingly, but what many people don’t realize is that squats build your entire body and will also boost your testosterone levels. When you squat all of the other muscles in your torso come into play as stabilizers and since you can handle your largest weights when doing squats, even the stabilizers get hit hard. In fact, squats could do more for your abdominal strength than even crunches.

Pressing movements will also work more than just the target muscles. Most people think of the bench press when pressing is mentioned, but the military press is just as valuable. Military presses should be done standing and you’ll soon see how this power movement incorporates all of the torso muscles and builds your upper body strength and power.

Rowing movements such as the T-bar row and barbell rows are the mainstay for adding power, thickness and strength across your back. While pulldowns and pull-ups will help widen your back, there is nothing that builds thickness like rowing movements with heavy weights.

The final power movement you want to include in your routine is deadlifts. These are great for your legs, lower and upper back and even your abs and shoulders. It’s another full body movement that will help you strengthen and bulk up all over.

You’ll probably notice that no mention has been made about movements for the biceps and triceps. You can do some direct work for these muscles, but honestly they won’t get near the amount of work that they receive from the compound exercises. Presses will destroy your triceps and rows will crush your biceps and you won’t really need much more.

As long as you keep these exercises as the core of your workout routine you should continue to increase in strength for a very long time. Use these at the beginning of a workout, after a proper warm up and save the isolation stuff for later. Isolation work is good for creating details in your muscles, but if you want to get big and strong you’ll need to stick with these basics.



By: Steven Walters

About the Author:

Body Weight Workout

After my article Stick Your Neck Out was published; I surprisingly caught some flack from the “hardcore” types just because I showed a stability ball being used in a few of the exercise applications.

Since I’m not emotionally attached to any one piece of equipment or style of training, I was not upset in the least about this. However, it did make me realize how misunderstood the Swiss ball is within the “hardcore strength” community.

So, in light of this realization, I’m stepping up to set the record straight once and for all about Swiss balls and how they should and shouldn’t be utilized in and effective strength program.

Don’t **** the Player, **** the Game

My friend and colleague Coach Rob Simonelli brought up an interesting point when he and I were discussing this article and why serious weight lifters dislike Swiss balls. Rob said “What serious lifters don’t understand is that it’s not so much that they dislike Swiss balls, it’s that they dislike what Swiss Balls represent”.

He was absolutely right. ******** weightlifters have made Swiss balls guilty by association just because there are a bunch of “functional trainers” out there doing some seriously ridiculous stuff on them.

This doesn’t mean that Swiss balls can’t be use for stuff that actually has value.

To all you Swiss ball haters out there, I want you to ask yourself one question; “Am I blaming the tool or the practitioner?”

I think you will realize that myself and Rob and are correct in saying that, the Swiss ball, like everything else in the gym is just a tool. One that can be used or abused depending on whose hands it’s in. Just because there are people out there abusing a certain tool doesn’t mean we should throw it out of the tool box all together. If that were the case, we wouldn’t use any equipment at all judging by what I’ve seen done with barbells and dumbbells these days.

Now let’s get one thing clear, the title of this article is not called “Swiss Ball Exercises that You Need to Do Everyday or Else Your Will Go to Pot”. The exercises shown in this article are in no way a necessity, they are just other options to challenge your body in a positive manner and compliment your “core” lifts.

In other words, they are just tools in the tool box.

You just have to know when to use the tools you’ve got.

When Instability and Strength is Actually Good

Recently, I got to attend one of my friend Eric Cressey’s classes on training the overhead athlete. During his workshop, Eric made a great point that I feel is relevant to this article. He said that although it has been found that unstable surface training for the lower body has been found to be ineffective and in some cases even counterproductive for healthy individuals, instability training for the upper body may actually be beneficial. Eric went on to explain that it all has to do with the fact that the lower body predominantly functions in a close chained (both feet in contact with the ground) manner that does not normally involve the ground moving underneath it. However, the upper body functions in more of an open chained (no ground or solid surface contact) manner with things more likely to move and change position.

This makes a lot of sense if you think of a football lineman blocking a pass rusher. The lineman’s feet are dealing with a flat and stable ground while his upper body is all over place dealing with another body moving in every which way trying to get around him.

Now that I have hopefully changed your mind about the Swiss ball, I’m going to provide you a list of exercises using the Swiss ball that we have found to be beneficial to our clients, athletes and physique competitors.

a href=”http://www.performanceu.net/article05.html”>Click here to view pictures and videos of all the exercises described below.

The Exercises

Y,T,W, L Shoulder Circuit w/Swiss Ball

The reason why we preffer to use the Swiss ball while performing our Y,T,W, L shoulder circuits has nothing to do with the shoulders themselves but has everything to do with the trunk. In that, when athletes perform the Y,T,W, Lcircuits on a flat surface like the floor or a bench, they usually start to extend from their lower back in a superman like position. This is normally due to the fact that they, like many athletes, lack ample shoulder flexion. Therfore, they attempt to kick in the lumbar extensors to help raise the arms.

If you reffer to my article How Not to Warm Up, you will see why this type of movement is undesirable. We all tend to slouch and sit too much, in doing so we create length and weakness in the thoracic area. So, the real goal here is to somehow create extension at the thoracic spine, not the lumbar spine. This can be successfully accomplished by performing the Y,T,W shoulder circuit on a Swiss ball.

With the swiss ball and some correct positioning, the extension comes from the thoracic spine

We position our athletes so that the apex of their thoracic curve during flexion over the ball is over top the apex of the ball itself. We also have them flex at the hip joint which further decreases extension at the lumbar spine. This enables us to get more bang for our buck.

We build endurance in all the muscles invovled in extending the thoracic spine while simutaneously reaping the benefits of the Y,T,W, L shoulder circuit.

The Swiss Ball Dumbbell Chest Press

The swiss ball chest press allows us to build flexibilty in hip flexors, strength endurance in the anterior neck muscles and glutes while simultaneously building upper body pushing strength.

The swiss ball chest press is the only exercise that we use a swiss ball in combination with weights. However, because it involves an unstable surface, we only use it while performing repetitive effort lifts and never use it while performing dynamic or max effort lifts.

Many people will agrue about the instability of the ball interferring with strength output. When I meet coaches that are of that mindset, I tell them two things;

1. If the feet are positioned shoulder width or wider, the instability is pretty much canceled out.

2. We agree that instabilty interferes with max strength output. This is why we ONLY use this exercise with submaximal loads as in a hypertrophy phase or repetitive effort phase.

In my mind, if you want allot of bang for your buck the Swiss ball chest press is a great choice.

Swiss Ball Perturbations

This is one of the most popular exercises we use at Performance University amoung our high level athlets and recreational clients alike.. Swiss perturbations are a fun and very effective way to develop rock solid core stability. The goal of the person holding the ball is to maintain optimal alignment and own the position thay began in. With each diffrent strike of the ball, the torso as to make a slight adjustment to maintain control of its position. Thi is what Rehab spractioners call rythmic stabilization. We call it a damn good exercise.

The unpredicatable nature of this exercise makes it more functional than most other “core stabilization” exercises.

This exercise can be progressed by the partner striking the ball with slightly more force or the holder standing with the feet closer together or in a stagered stance.

Swiss Ball Roll Out

The swiss ball roll out is one of our favorite exerciss for training the anterior trunk muscles. We like it because it devloped torso strength and pelvic control without putting the spine in a flexed position as it would be in a crunch or sit up type exercise. Mike Boyle produced a great article called Anterior Core Training that thoroughly desribes the theory and methodolgy behind movements like the swiss ball roll out. In that same article, Boyle also diplayed many progressions to the swiss ball roll out involving tools like the ab dolley and arko wheels. However, if you don’t have all of those tools/toys available to you, here are some simple progression strategies you can use.

The beginers version of the Swiss ball roll out starts with the elbows bent and forearms resting on the ball.

This exercise can then be progressed by raising the torso and straightening the arms. This lengthens the lever arm and increases the demand on the anterior core. Shown below.

On both of these roll out variations be sure to extend both your arms and legs while maintaining a fairly neutral spine. Only go out as far as you can without losing optimal spinal alignment.

The Reverse Ball Roll Out

As of late we have been using another variation of the roll out which we call reverse roll outs. To perform the reverse roll out, hold on to a stable object such as a weight bench. While maintaining alignment, extend your lower body until reaching a superman type position. Return to the starting position and repeat.

The height of surface your holding onto should be approx. even to the height of the ball. In the picture above, Tim is holding on to a bar that is slightly higher than the ball underneath his legs. You can see how this is causing him to sag slightly at his low back. We were in the process of moving our gym during this photo shoot and we had to work with what we had left in the gym.

Swiss Ball Toe Plank

This is another great anterior core exercise. We usually perform holds for anywhere from 10-20 seconds. Proper form for this exercise is pretty much self explanatory.

Swiss Ball Knee Tucks

If you have fairly decent “core strength”, Swiss ball knee tucks aren’t really that difficult. This is why we don’t use this exercise with the intention of building strength. We use this exercise to build awareness of what the rehab world calls” hip/back disassociation”.

All this really means is, how well you can move at your hips without moving at your lumbar spine. There are a lot of ways to accomplish this which are beyond the scope of this article. However, in the context of the Swiss ball knee tuck exercise, we want our athletes to be able to flex at their hip without flexing at their low back. If they can accomplish this, it shows that they posses good hip/back disassociation.

Athletes with poor hip back disassociation will always compensate for a lack of hip mobility by increasing mobility at the lumbar spine. Which according to the latest research is designed for stability, not mobility? My article How NOT to Warm Up covers that science in great detail.

The science aside, just keep this little saying in mind, “what your hips lack can hurt your back”.

So, yeah…do your knee tucks.

1 Leg Swiss Ball Knee Tuck

This version of the knee tuck is much more difficult than the previous because there is an added rotary component. Although there is no visual rotation, the athlete has to work to prevent gravity form pulling them into rotation on the side of the lifted leg. This is what my good friend JC Santana calls “training the invisible. This is an important point to keep in mind anytime you go from a bi-lateral position to a unilateral position.

1 Arm Holds

This is another one that’s pretty self explanatory. Simply maintain optimal spinal alignment while keeping your arm locked out. We use holds ranging from 5-15sec.

This one is just plain tough!

Swiss ball Straight Leg Bridge

We always make sure to encourage our athletes to create the lift using from their hamstrings and glutes, not from their low back. Athletes with an increased lordosis (low back curve) will find this more difficult and therefore tend to need more coaching on movements like this.

Yes, I know you can also do this on a bench but our athletes seem to like it better with the ball. So, as they say, “the customer is always right”.

Plus, you can’t do some of the progressions I’m about to show you on a bench.

Straight Leg Bridges (w/Long Lever)

We learned this progression from Coach JC Santana. It’s a great way to integrate in the calf’s and increase the overall difficulty on your posterior muscles.

Be sure to keep the heels off the ball.

1 Leg Hip Bridges (w/straight leg)

These are not only a great progression to the 2 leg bridges but they serve as a nice compliment to the 1 leg knee tucks.

These work on improving hip/back disassociation in extension. We want to see the extension coming from the hips and glutes and not from the low back. We encourage our athletes to keep the lifted knee stable during this exercise. If the knee moves, it means that the pelvis is moving and therefore stability is lost.

Swiss Ball Bent Leg Bridges

The bent leg bridges are more glute dominant bridge than the straight leg version. That said, your hamstring have to work isometrically to hold the ball in place while the hips rise and fall.

We normally just alternate straight and bent leg bridges each workout.

Swiss Ball Bent Leg Bridge (1 Leg)

The rules on the one leg version are the same as above. Just be sure to prevent any sort of pelvic rotation due to the reduced base of support.

Swiss Ball Leg Curls

Once you can successfully perform both the straight and bent leg exercises. We simply combine the two moves to make the leg curl. This you really can’t do with a bench. You can do this with a slide board if you have access to one.

Once your hips lift up, they don’t come down until the set is complete. Be sure to lift your hips higher up as the legs curl in. This will create a straight line between the knee, hip, and torso.

Aside from glute ham raises is the only exercise that allows us to train hip extension and knee flexion simultaneously. Those two motions are always coupled together during any locomotive type action.

Running involves the combined action hip extension and knee flexion of the rear leg as it prepares to pull through

1 Leg Ball Curl

This progression from the two leg curl, when done correctly, will challenge even the most advanced athlete.

Swiss Ball Complex

Once each one these exercises are mastered separately, we like to combine them into a Swiss ball complex. We use this complex as part of an active dynamic warm up, as a warm down or as active rest on recovery days.

We start with roll outs for 10-20 reps

Then to push ups for 10-20 for reps

Followed up with the Y,T,W,L shoulder circuit for 10-15reps each letter

Then move to knee tucks for 10-20 reps

We finish with a toes on ball plank hold for 10-30 seconds

This entire complex is normally performed for 1-3 sets and 0-60 seconds rest between sets. Three rounds of this at 20 reps each exercise with no break is just plain tough.

This complex is very popular with our clients and athletes because it has a smooth flow from between exercises, it’s easy to remember and it gets a lot of quality work done in little time. Aside from that, it’s kind of fun.

a href=”http://www.performanceu.net/article05.html”>Click here to view pictures and videos of all the exercises described above.

Final Comments

Well, there you have it, the definitive list of Swiss ball exercises that don’t ****.

If it’s not on this list and it involves a Swiss ball then…well, you get the point.

The exercises on this list have been a part of our performance and physique programs for many years. They have been used at some point by just about everyone who has walked through our doors.

I can’t honestly tell you that these Swiss ball are solely responsible for our clients and athletes consistently getting bigger stronger and faster.

But I can tell you that they sure as hell haven’t hurt.



By: Nick Tumminello

About the Author:

Body Weight Fitness

If you want wider lats, have I got an exercise for you! This one will blow up your lats like no other type of pull-up I’ve found. The secret to this one lies in where you do the pull-up…

But I’m not very good at keeping secrets so here it is…

You do the pull-ups in the CORNER of the power rack!

I know it’s hard to contain yourself at this point, but try to keep it together! Once I explain how to do pull-ups in the corner of the rack and why this corner pull-up works so good, you’ll be itching to get to the gym and try it.

To really properly explain why it works so good, you first need to know how to do it so you can visualize how it works.

Now, to do this exercise, you’re going to need a power rack. And that’s pretty much it. Technically, you should also be able to do at least 6 to 8 reps of regular pull-ups in order to perform this exercise. But even if you can’t do that, I’m also going to show you a way to spot yourself so you can perform this exercise and get just as much out of it as anybody else.

So even if you can’t do full pull-ups, keep reading!

First, stand facing the corner of the rack. Now reach up with your left hand and grip the top cross-bar with a PALM-FACING-AWAY grip (a.k.a. reverse grip) about 18 inches from the corner. Now reach up with your right hand and grip the side top beam with the same grip at the same relative distance from the corner as your left hand. You want to be sure to keep your grip even on the beams. Definitely experiment with grip width to best match your armspan when performing this exercise.

Now you’re ready to pull!

Bend your knees and get your feet off the ground. You’ll immediately notice the tension in your lats in that bottom position. Perform a regular pull-up movement, bringing your body up as high as possible.

Here’s the big trick…as you pull yourself up, try to consciously PUSH OUTWARDS against the cross-beams of the rack. This outwards pushing combined with the pulling up puts huge tension on the extreme outer fibers of the lats.

So pull yourself up as high as possible then lower yourself slowly and under complete control. The negative on this exercise is very intense and the stretch it puts on your lats is phenomenal!

As you get towards the bottom, let your arms go completely straight to maximize the stretch on the lats. Be sure to keep tension in the shoulders, though. Even though your arms are straight, you want your body to still be supported by muscle tension in the lats and not the tendons and ligaments of your shoulder joints.

Now pull back up again, remembering to push outwards against the cross-beams as you pull up.

Keep going until you can’t do any more reps. It’s a tough exercise and an eye-opener even for people who generally can do a lot of pull-ups!

So how do you do this exercise if you can’t do a lot of (or any!) pull-ups? Self-spotting with your feet.

When you’re in the rack, you can either set the safety rail or the racking pin (the hook that you rack the weight on) to about 2 feet or so off the ground. The exact height will depend on how tall your rack is and how tall you are. Basically, you’re going to be using it as a step. As you do the pull-up, you’re going to set your foot on that pin/rail and use your legs to help you get the reps.

It’s important here to give yourself only as much help as you need to complete the rep you’re doing, NOT so much that you’re just standing up and down and going through the motions. You want to keep strong tension on the lats to get the most out of this exercise.

This technique is good not only for those who need help right off the bat but for doing forced reps when you CAN do full reps on your own. When you can’t perform another full rep on your own, set your foot on the pin/rail and keep going!

You can also perform this exercise using a palms-facing-in grip, but I’ve found it to be less effective in terms of hitting the outer lats than the palms-facing-out version.

Conclusion:

If wider lats are what you’re looking for, this exercise will do the trick. It’s a powerful variation of an old standard and will really fire your lats up fast! Test it out in your next back workout and be sure to let me know how SORE your lats are the next day…



By: Nick Nilsson

About the Author:

Body Weight Exercise