So as i sit here and write this article i am watching the mighty ducks. Pondering over what i am going to write this week as my exercise of the week. Before i get into this article, i must apologize for not blogging at all last week. It was a very hectic week and i should have made time to write, but i got consumed in my work and my family. This week is a bit less high paced so i should be good to write all week. I would like to thank everyone for their comments so far, they are appreciated and any input you have will be used.

So on to the article.

The exercise of the week this week will be of a different sorts. Many of you gym goers will not have used it. Some of you may have, but i dont anticipate alot of you have. That exercise is called Chaos Shrugs. First off the chaos concept is a very excellent concept as it works the muscle very thoroughly. The basics for chaos exercises is that you will suspend a kettlebell or a plate, or a dumbbell with tension bands, and the harder you work the more the weight will bounce thus creating more tension on the muscles.

For this exercise in particular all you need is a pair of kettlebells or dumbbells and some tension elastics. All you need to do is fold the elastics so that they will hold the weight, then thread it through the handle. Wrap the other end of the elastics around your wrist to set yourself up to do your first lift.

Now you are going to start slow, and lift up the weight using only your traps, just like a normal shrug. Hold for 2 seconds and release the tension in your traps. You will notice that as you lift and lower the weight it bounces. This is good, it is the whole concept of the exercise. It will work your muscles from a totally different angle and way then doing shrugs with a dumbbell or a barbell.

I would suggest keeping the rep range in the mid-range area. 8-10 should do. As with all of my exercises i will do 3 sets. You are welcome to do more or less if you so please. So try it out. Do the sets for a couple weeks, see how you feel, and let me know how it works for you.

Happy father’s day to ll of the fathers out there. Enjoy it, go golfing or spend some time with your kids. I know this is my first one and i am looking forward to a relaxing day. Workout log and exercise of the week coming up. I think its going to be chaos shrugs, or maybe rest/pause sets. We shall see.

Ok so im a little late on this one, yesterday was an involuntary off day lol. My back was aching from doing shoulders and traps the night before. That is fine, i did some situps at home, it was supposed to ba an abs day anyways.
It hurt to do the situps but my back is fine today so it is all good. We went for an extended drive yesterday, and talked. It was good to just get away and get ourselves back on the same page. Then we went out for a beer with my girlfriends friends.
Today will be a leg day, providing i can get to the gym, as i missed the boat this morning. But if i do make it, i will be doing legs. I also plan to take my daughter for a walk, down by the beach. She will hopefully enjoy that.
Anyways Thats all for now, i will check back in after the gym.

So im getting pretty good at this whole technology thing here. We have recently signed up for the twitter service, so you can follow us here! Follow Us

Creatine. Creatine. Creatine. How many times can I say the word? If I were to say the name as many times as there is products out there I would easily have a 500 word article in its self. But this article isn’t about just any old creatine. Wait, that’s exactly what this is about. Old school creatine. Creatine Monohydrate. This is creatine in the purest form and the current supplement of choice for this man, and we will see in about a month how that treats me.

Now for the basics. Creatine monohydrate is a molecular compound of 3 basic amino acids, those being l-methionine, l-arginine and l-glycine. 95% of creatine is found in skeletal muscle tissue, coming in 2 different forms. Chemically unbound creatine which is in a free flowing state and creatine phosphate.

Now creatine can be found in a natural form, but due to the process of cooking, and evidently cooking out the creatine, it is best ingested in powder form. So unless you feel like shoveling down 2.2 pounds of raw red meat, or fish a day to get the recommended 4 – 5 grams a day. Take the damn powder.

Now creatine’s Performance enhancing properties are still after all these years up for debate, and can be sometimes hard to understand the mechanics of it, but one thing is for certain, it builds big muscles. When creatine enters the body, it rushes to the muscles and in there it attracts a great deal of water to the muscle cells therefore enlarging them quite a bit. Now one would sit back and think, why would I want to fill my muscles with water. Well it’s quite simple when you sit back and look at it. While studies have tried to prove better protein synthesis as well as minimized catabolism, one thing is for certain. You receive boosted strength, as well as the psychological benefits of having visibly larger muscles.

Creatine will also give you a faster recovery time while at the gym and it will give you greater tolerance of the workload you are taking on. Now for one to really understand the benefits of creatine they will need to understand what Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) is and what it does. In a nutshell ATP is the compound that you muscle uses when it makes a contraction. So every curl, every squat, your muscles are burning ATP. In taking creatine, you are essentially boosting your body’s ability to regenerate ATP levels, thus making you be able to work out more intense as well as recover faster.

Now believe it or not there a few myths surrounding the use of creatine. Gym Heads, or Gym Rats will sometimes say that you need to be loading on and cycling off creatine, like taking 20 grams a day for 5 days or taking 40 grams a day for a week. Well here is only so much creatine your body can handle. Creatine has been proven to be highly effective without a loading phase. 5 grams a day will give you solid results in 2 weeks or so. Creatine is perfect to use because it allows continual use without cycling, a process used for fat burners and other supplements so that your body doesn’t get used to them.

All in all, with the only side effect being gastric upset in the first few days, you will find that creatine is a very solid supplement, one that should already be a staple in your gym bag. If it isn’t yet, it soon will be.

Ok….. So i finally made it back to the gym.

I woke up this morning and my back just was not feeling it. After doing alot of running around this afternoon/evening it was not feeling any better at all. I decided to do some surfing on bodybuilding.com and my motivation came back really strong. I decided at 9 that it was time and off i was.

Im very glad that i made the decision as i had one of my best workouts i have had in a long while. Today was a shoulders/traps day and i decided to cut the traps short just to be cautious about my lower back.

It was a very good workout, the weight i pushed was not through the roof, but my shoulders and traps felt blasted after. I also picked up a new creatine product that i started trying today. It is AllMax Nutrition Creatine Monohydrate, let me know if you have tried it.

On to the workout:

Dumbbell Laterals: 15lb x 20 warmup
Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 50 x 10 + 2 Rest-Pause/ 45 x10/ 45 x 10
Dumbbell Laterals: 15 x 10/ 15 x 10/ 15 x 10
Rear Delt Laterals: 10 x 10/ 10 x 10/ 10 x 10/
Rocky’s: 50 x 10/ 50 x 10/ 50x 10
Barbell Shrugs: 180 x 10/ 180 x 10/ 180 x 10

Thats all ladies and gents

So this will be the section where i will post all of the links that i have collected over the past week. They man not always be bodybuilding related but they will always be interesting. Enjoy:

Building Muscle For Newbs
Click Here

Re-Tooling The Beginner Diet
Click Here

Kevin Kearns Interview
Click Here

Troy Alvez’s Arm Day
Click Here

Lou Ferrigno Trains Michael Jackson
Click Here

Brock “Best Ever”?
Click Here

Couture vs Nogueria Confirmed
Click Here

Cro Cop Win Stands
Click Here

Gain Muscle, Discover Your Six Pack
Click Here

So this is day 3, and i woke up this morning to a very sore back. Good news is the pain is in my muscle in my lower back, i know good news right? It could be worse, it could have been my spine. I made the decision to take the day off and rest my back up, i will continue to rest for the day and hit shoulders/traps it will be a good test to see how my back is doing.

Sorry for the lack of news today but tomorrow will be more interesting, promise.

Ok so this column is quickly turning from near and dear  to me, to my worst idea ever. I Will start by saying that i have never been hurt at the gym and i take pride in using proper form to avoid such situations. That being said, the last 2 days i have hurt myself at the gym lol. Yesterday i tweaked something in my upper back, right below my shoulder blade, not to serious, i can barely feel it today. Well today was back day and it started out great.

I started will some bent over rows, just one set, to warm up, low weight with high reps, i think i did like 20. Then it was on to wide grip pull downs, one of my favorites. I Started with 130 and did 10 plus a rest pause set. I wont get into my love for rest pause, refer back to yesterday for that. I finished pull downs off with 2 sets at 145, 6 reps then 8. Next was bent over rows.

Now i do my rows with an underhand grip, personal preference. I find it works my bi’s as well. I have seen people do them either way but for me it has always been underhand grip. So i did my 3 sets, all to 10 reps at 110. I know this is low weight, but i have not done back in a while, so i decided to ease into it.

Apparently i wasn’t easing in enough, i made it through 1 set of dead lifts at 130 and tweaked my lower back, and it hurts. Now this isn’t an unbearable pain, and im sure its a combination of my lower back being weak, and me not training it enough period. One leads to another anyhow. So i decided to cut the dead lifts short, just to be safe.

I tried doing some single arm rows, wasn’t gonna happen, cable rows? nope. I had my whole biceps workout still left to do as well, but i decided to cut my loses and call it a day, i don’t want to do any more damage. I will do my bi’s on my core/calf day for this week. I just hope my back if fine for my leg day tomorrow.

For the rest of the day, after i take my protein i am going to clean the house, maybe fold some laundry. Then i am going to take my daughter for a walk, maybe to the park. Then its off to work at 2, i may make an update from there, depending on how busy i am.

Here’s the stats:

Wide Grip Pull Downs: 130 x 10 + RP / 145 x6 /145 x 8

Bent Over Rows: 110 x 10 / 110 x 10 / 110 x 10

Deadlifts: 130 x 10 / 130 x 2 (Stopped/Ended workout)

One Arm Rows : ——

Cable Rows : ——-

BB Curls: ——-

DB Preachers: ———

Stability Ball Hammer: ———

P.S. Progress pics in a week

First off let me start by saying that the exercise that i am about to write is absolutely Macho Man Randy SAVAGE! They may be one of my absolute favorite to do, and they give unparalleled results in working the muscle that they are designed to do.

That exercise being….. Tricep Kickbacks. Tricep kickbacks are critical in gaining muscle in your arms, and considering that triceps make up for 2/3 of your arms, if you are looking to get huge arms, this is a great way to help.

You don’t need to go too heavy doing tricep kickbacks, you just need to focus on proper form, and repping it out. Complete every rep and don’t give up. Your arms WILL burn, they will burn and burn and burn, especially if you throw them at the end of a tricep day or a chest day.

In order to do kickbacks effectively you need a flat bench, and a dumbbell. You could probably do it with a stability ball as well, which just gave me an idea for my next workout. I will get back to you and let you know how that works next time.

To start the exercise you are going to put the weight on the ground to the left of the bench or ball, then you are going to put your right leg on the bench or ball. next you will pick up the weight and raise your arm with your elbow bent until the elbow is parallel to the floor. Next without moving your arm position you will raise the weight until the arm is completely straight. Then you will lower the weight back down to the starting position. That is one complete rep.

Some tips for this exercise would be to keep your elbow locked to your sides, and look ahead at all times. You want to make sure you squeeze your tricep muscle at the top and as always go hard from first rep to the end.

All in all to sum this exercise in one word… SAVAGE… That is all, just savage. If you are looking to gain muscle, or get bigger arms, this will work for you, if you are looking for great definition, this will work for you. It is a well rounded exercise that will make your arms bigger, and just may end up one of your favorite exercises.