Training Archives - Page 6 of 8 - Next Level Athletics

How to Avoid Shoulder Pain

I wish there had been a resource on keeping shoulders healthy when I first got into barbell strength training, because I certainly could have used it.

Or maybe there was but I was too thick-skulled to listen. Injuries are for old guys and pussies, I always thought.

Shoulder pain

Boy, was I wrong.

While I’m by no means a “shoulder expert”, my own shoulder problems have led me to modify and find safer ways of training over the years.

Plus, I have seen my fair share of guys with shoulder issues training hockey players – a sport where shoulder injuries are about as commonplace as Big Macs on a fat kid’s dinner plate.

So without further ado, here are a few simple tips how to keep training hard while preventing shoulder pain.

6 Snatch Tips for Athletes

No man should ever experience a life without snatch.

If you want bigger, stronger, healthier shoulders and a higher vertical jump, you gotta know how to perform and progress snatches safely over time.

Here are six ways to getting the most out of them.

1. Start with 1 Arm Dumbbell Snatches

I know some strength coaches dislike 1 arm DB snatches due to lack of hip extension – one well-known guy called them “not even a real lift” to my face not too long ago.

While I don’t disagree with that notion, I still believe they deserve a place in a proper strength training program.

It’s by far the easiest snatch variation to teach, thus making it very attractive in my eyes for teaching a large group of athletes how to accelerate and decelerate external loads rapidly.

4 Reasons Why High Frequency Training Leads to Faster Strength Gains

My own training has been going really well as of late, which can be evidenced by numerous PR’s I’ve hit over the past few months.

I believe a big reason behind this is increased training frequency coupled with performing only a handful of key lifts while training with submaximal weights, something that I rarely see mentioned in fitness magazines where the typical recommendation revolves around increasing exercise selection and workout volume within a single session.

Trains with high frequency – is ridiculously strong

I’ve always believed the standard way of splitting the body in smaller muscle groups, then training each body part once per week is about the worst thing you can do as a natural person with average genetics when trying to improve strength and athleticism.

However, for the longest time I bought into the notion that you could only train “heavy” three times per week for fear of overtraining.

While I still think 3 full-body or upper/lower training sessions per week works well for quite a while for just about anyone looking to experience marked strength and size increases, at some point you need to try something different to blast through plateaus.

10 Great Classic Rock Songs to Train to

Most public gyms I’ve ever visited resemble Studio 54 more than a weight room when it comes to the music they’ve got blasting through the loudspeakers.

It has been scientifically proven that listening to Usher, Katy Perry or the Jonas Brothers when lifting heavy things decreases testosterone levels by as much as 80%, dropping your strength and power output capabilities down to approximately the level of a carboard cutout of Miley Cyrus.

To counteract the strength-sapping, catabolism-inducing effects of sucky training music, I have provided a daily remedy for treating these severe symptoms in this post.

Side effects may include a newly-found desire to load more weight on the bar, an uncontrollable need for headbanging between sets and a sharp increase in lusty gazes from attractive females wearing tight spandex.

Turn the volume up (I mean UP!) and wear your game face like the nice gentlemen of Metallica above as you go about shattering previous personal records with ease.

#10 Foo Fighters – Best of You

Dave Grohl has got one of the best voices in contemporary rock, and I get chills every time he lets loose at the 2:00 mark in this video.

Simple Training and Nutrition Tips for Young Hockey Players

Now that I’m fully back on the writing saddle after a four-month hiatus from the blog at the beginning of this year, I’ve begun receiving more training related questions again.

A few days ago, I found an email in my inbox from a young hockey player seeking my advice on nutrition and off-ice training.

Here’s the email (edited slightly for clarity and to protect privacy):

“Dear Yunus,

I was wondering if you could help me out.

I am a 16-year-old hockey player. I am contacting you for some advice for working out over the summer as a hockey player.

I live [on the East Coast] so unfortunately I cannot train with you however; I was hoping you could help me out with my training. I am small for my age (5’4) but height is overrated and I know you know because you saw numerous small hockey players at Ben Prentiss’s gym.

My goal this summer is to get bigger, stronger, and most importantly faster. I have learned that no matter how hard you work in the gym if you do not eat right you will not see the results you want.

This brings me to my first question, what is considered a good protein recovery shake?

One Simple Trick for Increased Exercise Volume

As strength & conditioning coach Mike Boyle is fond of saying: “In the fitness industry, common sense is not very common.”

I was once again reminded of this in the middle of my own training session yesterday.

Normally, I pay zero attention to what other people are doing in the gym, as I’ve noticed reminiscing about Jessica Alba’s underwater scenes in Into the Blue in the midst of a rest period keeps my blood pressure relatively within the accepted norms as opposed to having to witness yet another leg press-knee extension-lying leg curl training session that seems to be the go-to lower body workout for almost every personal trainer and their clients in town.

See? I told ya that was an Oscar-worthy performance by Jessica. If only I knew how to Photoshop myself in there and become that creepy white guy ~~groping those tight little buttocks~~ palpating her hip rotators, I think I could die happy…

But as I recovered from my R-rated, heavily Jessica Alba-influenced thoughts for a thorough look at the peeps training at the half-empty gym, it suddenly dawned on me that almost nobody uses supersets (sets combining opposite muscle groups/movement patterns) in their strength training sessions.

Why should this matter? Continue Reading

Research Corner November 2014 – How to Optimize Creatine Supplementation For Enhanced Strength and Muscle Gains?

Among a wide variety of mass gainers, fat boosters, diet pills and other bogus supplements, the one sports supplement that has been shown to actually work time and time again rarely gets featured in the limelight.

Today we’re going to take a cold, hard look at the facts behind this one product that does enhance athletic performance – and the best part is, it won’t set you back financially by a fortune unlike many of the other supplements on the market with exceptional marketing tactics but woefully inadequate impact on strength levels and body composition.

Enter creatine.

What Creatine?

Creatine is the most well researched supplement out there, with numerous studies showcasing its efficacy regarding increases in strength, power and muscle mass. [1-5]

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