WORKOUT RULE No. 1: MUSCLE ISOLATION

The foundation of any workout routine is isolating the target muscle. When it comes to body transformation—sculpting and enlarging your physique, otherwise known as bodybuilding—we need to learn how to isolate the TARGET muscle.

The target muscle is that muscle which a particular exercise or machine is designed to work in isolation. You can’t efficiently isolate a target muscle if you are bound and determined to lift heavy at any cost. 

As an example, watching people on a chest press machine, or on a bench press bench using free weights, it is clear that MOST people are misusing their shoulder muscles to do a significant portion of the work. Chest exercises are not called “shoulder exercises” for the obvious reason that chest exercises are designed to work, build and sculpt your chest. 

To figure out how to go about learning to isolate the pecs in this case you'll find it easier to remove the emphasis you are currently placing on your shoulders—most likely you’re doing so out of fear of dropping the too-heavy weight you’ve taken on—and transfer 100% effort to your pectorals. Re-learning movements to make them more rewarding means backing off on the poundages so you can concentrate on the actual mechanics of the movement.

The problem so many people in the gym have is that they are ego-lifters; their goal is “how much weight can I lift so as to impress others?” —which might be all right if you are a powerlifter. However to sculpt, build and shape your individual muscles (calfs, biceps, quads, etc.), it’s not about how much weight you can move. But rather it’s about performing the exercise by utilizing the target muscle in ISOLATION, while employing the heaviest weight that still allows you to use PROPER STRICT FORM. When we lose proper form we end up just spinning our wheels.

Even after 50 years in the gym, if my mind wanders as I perform a set, there goes my form. It takes as much mental energy as it does physical energy to properly complete a productive set, to achieve the results that you originally set out to achieve.

Weekend Inspiration: Melis Pier Paolo

 Italian Bodybuilder Melis Pier Paolo

Sometimes We Need A Kick In The Ass To Get Us To The Gym:

Relatively few people wish to engage in any physical fitness regimen. To them, physical exertion is not appealing.

Everyone has the right to do, or not do, what makes them happy, but no one has the right to demand that others accommodate the fallout from their poor decisions.

 Additionally, investing time and dedication in writing and rehearsing a script—as so many do—from which to testify one’s decision to not engage in exercise or eat healthfully is poor choice of one’s time and resources.

There are hundreds of Youtube videos showing people having wheelchairs strapped to their bodies performing pullups, people missing arms or legs—or both—working out in gyms, people grievously wounded in battle participating in organized sports. Some problems with injury or illness as described here, minor in comparison, may not preclude the writers' swimming, doing pullups, chinups, crunches, pushups or a whole host of muscle strengthening, body transforming, self-empowering physical activity.

One revealing response from people in my experience is the scoffing “What are you trying to do, live forever?” as if they perceive no value in extending one’s healthy years, mobility, strength, energy, stamina and sex life.

Indeed the physical manifestations of destructive choices we observe in our older friends and relatives— smoking, drinking, pain pill popping, obesity, their disinterest in rehabilitating fixable injuries—provide an example to the rest of us that our chosen path of pursuing physical fitness is the wiser one.

HORMONALPHOBIA: Doctors Go To War Against TRT

The bare-faced LIES that doctors tell against hormone replacement therapy regarding both genders, but especially TRT for men, are egregious.

The facts as shown in multiple studies have PROVEN this: Men with low T who are NOT being treated with TRT have TWICE the death rate overall as men with low T who ARE being treated with TRT.

In other words, TRT Saves Lives.

Dr. Abraham Morgantaler, Head of Urology at Harvard Medical School, lectures his fellow physicians on the error of their ways at a conference in Madrid:

Too Old Or Too Weak?

The vast majority of people are unfit physically. They are weak. Their agility and mobility have been compromised by physical inactivity in general and the lack of any exercise program in particular.

In truth we do not know the details of THIS STORY, but the grandmother was driving, and the car ended upside down with a baby dangling in a child’s car seat. The grandmother was neither incapacitated nor even injured, according to this report, yet there is no evidence in this story that she tried to climb out of the car, much less tried to save the baby. Passers-by were tasked with doing so.

Denial and justification are tools much overused when humans are confronted with their failing to care for themselves. Had circumstances been different that baby could have died, if the car caught fire or afterward was hit by another vehicle or ended up in a waterway. Many scenarios could have made this worse, yet the real fact is this grandmother - who literally could be as young as 40 - could not extricate herself or the baby despite her not being injured.

This exact scenario plays out daily, hourly, all over the world. People too weak, too immobile, too fat to extricate themselves and their loved ones from a dangerous situation—a fire, live shooter, flood, etc.— merely due to their being physically unfit to an extreme degree. These are the same people who scream in favor of “body positivity” and against “fat shaming,” who twist logic and common sense to justify their choice of self-neglect resulting in compromised mobility that could—and all too often does—result in tragedy. 

Pain And Discomfort Are Two Different Things

James Grage

Sometimes slogans are stupid. One of these is “no pain, no gain.”

Pain is your body telling you, “Uh-oh, something’s wrong. Stop what you’re doing and reassess.”

Discomfort is lactic acid buildup you endure as you finish your 10th rep. Discomfort is being dizzy, having depleted your muscles of energy. Discomfort is aching muscles the day after your workout, which is nothing like the pain of a pulled muscle or torn ligament.

There should be no pain whatsoever in your workout, whether it be treadmill, swimming, weight lifting or anything else. Discomfort comes from pushing your muscles beyond your previous limit utilizing proper strict form. Pain comes from pushing your muscles, bones, joints, ligaments beyond their limits recklessly, mindlessly, ignorantly.

Proper form is the key to fitness progress and success. Improper form is why people don’t go to the gym, or run, or swim laps anymore.

There’s no excuse for improper form these days, what with sensible youtubers like Jeff Cavaliere, Mike Thurston, James Grage and more willing to teach you for free.

Pec Deck Machine Update For Shoulder Impingement

I have found a way to eliminate shoulder pain from a shoulder impingement. For a long time I had been diagnosed with a tendonitis / rotator cuff problem. This resulted in me trying to "protect" the bad shoulder by unconsciously raising it higher than the good shoulder, even while relaxing at home or driving. 

Once I realized I was shrugging or raising the bad shoulder, but not the good shoulder, I knew that was a problem. To rectify this I prepare for any given exercise by first getting into position, then I deliberately drive the bad shoulder downward in opposition to my tendency to raise or shrug it. Only then do I begin performing the exercise.  

I also found—against my own advising in the above pec deck video to maintain a bend in the elbow—that instead, consciously extending my arm as far out as possible on both the positive and negative portions of the pec deck exercise eliminated all pain.

As always, I need to thoroughly concentrate on every degree in the arc of every movement rather than allow my mind to wander in order to maintain this revamped technique. If my mind wanders at all, my form suffers, and the pain resulting from slipping back into poor form snaps me back to concentrating.

My Workout PhD video is available on AMAZON at THIS LINK.

IWWIWWIWI*

*I Want What I Want When I Want It. —and I'll call GrubHub so I don't have to get up off the couch.

There. I’ve solved the issue once and for all: IWWIWWIWI is the key to why people are fat—their absolute unwillingness to go without whatever the fuck they want to eat right at this very moment. 

This latest article pandering to the weight-challenged from THE ATLANTIC by professional facilitator of people’s bad behavior James Hamblin is just another (It’s not your fault!) pile-on.

If you want to waste valuable time reading Hamblin’s screed, click THIS LINK, because I don’t have the stomach to regurgitate such nonsense, and not just due to it’s being Sunday and I’ve got some Love Island to catch up on.

But I must say, if I read or hear one more idiot cluelessly state “diets don’t work” I might stop reading altogether (except for Stephen King.)

To recap: All diets work. People who “go on a diet” thinking that after they are “finished,” and then “go off the diet” believing their weight problem has been permanently fixed, and therefore they can go back to their “normal diet” of overeating and then claim “the weight came back!” —as if such a no-brainer were the world’s greatest unsolved mystery— need more than just their freakin’ heads examined.

It's not about "going on a diet" temporarily, but rather adopting a new permanent diet that is more healthful and doesn't provide more calories that you burn.

With 13 International Telescopes Currently Atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, Adding Another Is A “Desecration?”

Telescopes atop Hawaii Island's Mauna Kea and Maui Island's Haleakala are tasked with early detection of asteroids with earth-crossing trajectories.

To claim that Mauna Kea belongs to a small group of imperious Pacific Islanders, some of whom are interlopers not from Hawaii, is preposterous, not just because they don’t get to decide such things for other Hawaiians or kama`aina, but they don’t get to decide anything for anyone. 

I live on Hawaii Island and I pay taxes, and those hard-earned taxes paid the cost of building and maintaining the roads on Mauna Kea and those that lead to it, and yet the eunuchs that compose our island government are allowing a group of primitive tribalists to commandeer and block the roads—and delegate who gets to drive on them and who do not.

It doesn’t help that entitled millionaire movie star assholes like Duane Johnson and Jason Mamoa claiming to be concerned about the environment whilst flying across the Pacific Ocean on their luxury private jet planes profess to be in solidarity with this tribe of primitive renegades for their own selfish Hollywood PR photo-op purposes. What phonies these two have shown themselves to be.

Everyone has a culture—you and me and everyone else on this earth. We all have beliefs. No one else’s culture trumps yours, or mine, or theirs. We are all equal—or so we’re told, that is, until a band of primeval misfits shows up and suddenly decides they’re in charge.

Shame on cowardly local TV stations KITV, KGMB, KHNL and KHON for providing virtually no publicity whatsoever to those lettered native Hawaiians who support science and the telescope and the benefits it brings to Hawaii and to the world, which includes early detection of earth-bound asteroids. It’s as simple an equation as formally educated Hawaiians vs. the uneducated.

Many of us have to make the 3-hour drive across the island to receive medical care, and the protesters have virtually shut down that main highway, only adding to the stress and fatigue and additional time it requires to make the arduous trip.

Try having skin cancer surgery sometime, then having to drive an exhausting 3+ hours to get back home without pain pills—and then coming upon a roadblock.

 

                                                       

Which Is Better—Leg Press or Squats?

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Which Is Better—Leg Press or Squats?

People who argue questions like this do so because they prefer talking to doing. These kinds of pointless debating points are nothing but distractions from the fact that those engaging in such conversation aren’t at the gym working out—and most likely haven’t been in quite a while.

Whenever I run across such nonsense in forums, or in online articles by the “experts,” three things jump out at me:

First of all, the bozos heatedly arguing the topic aren’t at the gym working their quads, but rather sitting on their ass, eyes glued to a screen.

Secondly, the bozos heatedly arguing the topic aren’t at the gym working their quads, but rather sitting on their ass, eyes glued to a screen.

And Third, the bozos heatedly arguing the topic aren’t at the gym working their quads, but rather sitting on their ass, eyes glued to a screen.

To sum up, Thumb presses don’t count as a workout. And there’s no way to scientifically qualify or quantify which exercise is “better,” especially when those debating the question in most cases aren’t often doing either one.

By the way, that’s me and my quads in the photo on the leg press machine. I rarely do squats. I asked my quads for their opinion, and all four agreed that neither exercise is any better than the other.

To quote Quad #2, "It's not what exercise you do, it's how you do it."