1-Arm Dumbbell Row: Don't Twist

When these get too heavy, the tendency is to build velocity at the bottom of the movement by letting the working side's shoulder droop down, and then twisting. This is cheating. This is a lat exercise, not an oblique exercise. For the sake of not only your lat development but your spine, don't get into this habit. You may not be strong enough to hurt yourself doing this now, but when your tossing around 200 pounders, an explosive twist like this just isn't safe.

Keep your shoulders flat and strong. Let your lat feel the stretch, but resist it in your torso. Bring the weight up tight to your side. Rock.

Rotator Cuff Exercises Exposed!

In a Friday link roundup awhile back, I posted a link to an article with some good tips for taking care of your rotator cuffs. So let me explain some of the exercises.

*External rotation (scarecrow)
Holding light weights in your hand, stand as if you're going to do a shoulder press, but stop when your upper arms are parallel with the ground. Leaving your elbow at a 90 degree angle, rotate at the shoulder until your forearms are also parallel with the ground, then lift back. Repeat.

Your rotator cuff is weak in this direction. Think of this as the opposite of throwing a ball. You can snap your arm forward with great speed. This exercise will help to provide some strength in the other direction.

*Lying external rotation
The shoulder is complicated, and I can't really tell you what specific muscles are benefited by doing this while laying on your side, but I've read it several places. Lay on your side with your upper arm running down your body, once again parallel with the floor, and maintaining the 90 degree angle in your elbow, lower the weight until your forearm is parallel with the ground as well. You can also do this standing, but with a cable machine, if you have access to a cable machine with a pulley that slides up and down a track. Place the pulley level to your elbow and perform the same motion.

*Cable laterals
Remember when I said that machines were good at some things that free weights aren't? One of those things is resistance throughout the range of motion. When doing dumbbell laterals, at the bottom of the movement there is no resistance to your delts. You can hold the dumbbells all day and your traps will get tired, and your hands, obviously, but not your delts. It's as you move them out and up, challenging gravity, that your delt will feel resistence.

That means if you've only been doing dumbbell laterals, there is a weak point in the bottom of your range. You can correct this by doing cable laterals. These will be tough, and the stack might not even allow for a low enough weight for you. If this is the case, take a light dumbbell and do laterals laying on your side. You only need to lift through about the first 20 degrees.

None of these exercises do you want to do low rep, and through no rep should you grunt and struggle as you might a squat or bench press. The fact that these target your rotator cuff means that pushing them too hard could easily cause injury.

Alright. I think I'm going to stop harping about the rotator cuff for awhile.

Hitting the Inner Thigh with Sumo DL

The inner-thigh, or the hip adductors, are a socially interesting muscle group. They are only ever purposefully targeted by women. I don't really know why you'd want large inner-thighs, but if you do, I can tell you how to get them, and it's not with a Thigh Master.

Forget the isolation machines for building your legs. You can do three sets of leg-extensions, three sets of hamstring curls, three sets of hip adductors and three sets of hyper-extensions, or you can do three sets of sumo deadlift and then hit whatever you didn't feel burning bad enough (probably quads).

*Sumo deadlift demonstrated

I've heard that powerlifters who start out training in traditional deadlift and then switch to sumo stance are limited by their inner-thigh strength, and often have difficulty walking the day after training. Sounds fun, huh? Both styles of DL are acceptable in competition, and your body type determines which is most effective for you. However, if you are trying to target your hip adductors, regardless of build, you want to try sumo stance DLs.

Being very long legged, I can't bring a bar past my knees in traditional stance. Being very long legged, I'm also not a powerlifter. If, like me, all you want in life are inner-thighs that chaff together when you jog, get off the machine and as the rappers say, get low.

Grocery Store Strategy

Check out my guest post about grocery store strategy at the always delightful Cranky Fitness Blog. You'll marvel at the many benefits of applying OCD tendencies to grocery shopping.

Next, advanced list-making: make a list of all your most crucial lists!

Want Big Arms? Squat.

There are still some people out there who don't work their legs. For a long time, I thought this was a mythical breed, being to sketch comedy what the unicorn, dragon, and wildebeest are to fairy tales. But it's true, and they're very stubborn. They say they're not interested in the real world strength that only comes with leg and lower-back work. They say they don't wear shorts anyway. They say they're little wimps who can't handle the vomit-inducing beauty of a twenty-rep set of rock-bottom squats. However, there's always one thing that gets them: leg day makes the rest of you bigger.

“How can this be?”
“Are you serious?”
“Why do regardless and irregardless mean the same thing?”

It's true, squats, deadlifts, and leg press will make the rest of you grow, too. Tests have been done in which people only did squats, and their arms grew. The squat is a great exercise, but unlike in deadlifts, the upper arm is totally uninvolved. So how does it happen?

1. Heavy lifts release hormones
Hormones that make muscles grow. Your legs can move so much weight, it basically makes your body freak out. Your body doesn't want to let itself be crushed under hundreds of pounds, so it releases hormones to let you build the muscle that will assure that doesn't happen. You will never do a heavy enough lateral to get this effect.

And

2. CNS power
The large muscles of the glutes, hams and quads require a lot of nerve signal to fully activate. When your body gets used to activating a huge amount of muscle at once, it builds up your central nervous system. This will benefit every exercise, even your laterals (why do you like laterals so much?).

Anything you lift in the real world you need to be able to support with your legs and lower back, but even if you aspire to a martini glass figure, know that not going through the sickening, brutal pain of leg day is going to limit your growth.

Lift With a Friend

Last Wednesday I pulled a new personal record for an unbelted deadlift. It was set to happen, but it had been set to happen 2 weeks ago when I tried and stalled out. So what was different about this time? I worked out with a friend.

I usually go to the gym alone, unfortunately. The time that I go isn't good for most people. I like it because the gym is pretty empty at that time of the morning, but I do wish I had some company. What are the benefits of having a friend to work out with?

1. Accountability
Someone else is counting on you to show up. You'll know that being too tired, while being a good enough excuse on your own, doesn't cut it when someone's waiting for you to spot them. In other words: if will power doesn't work, shame might.

2. Fun
Unless you are really into working out, it can be kind of boring. Especially if you're slogging through a 45 minute cardio session. Having a friend to talk to can be the difference between being bored and having fun, and if you're like me, boredom is the first and last sign I'm going to stop doing something. I've got a zero-tolerance boredom threshold.

3. Competition / Vanity
When you're competing against someone of similar strength, you'll dig down deeper and move weight you didn't know you could. You can be cheering each other on and still be desperately trying to beat each other.

And even if your strength levels are different, so that you're not directly competing, you will still want to look as strong as possible, because you are vain and shallow.

4. Safety
You'll be able to confidently and safely do exercises you wouldn't be able to alone. You'll be able to push through an extra rep on your bench with someone spotting you, and you'll find that you are actually stronger than you thought, because your fear was keeping you from going all out. That means faster gains. Getting heavy dumbbells into place is difficult, and with some help you can take the energy you would have spent awkwardly hoisting them and use it for an extra rep or two.

Boy, after writing this article, it makes me really wish more people liked me so that I didn't have to work out alone. Ah well, what ya gonna do about it, be pleasant to be around?

Liven Up Your Protein Shake

I drink a chocolate protein shake made with whey protein and skim milk after every workout. I drink chocolate protein shakes because it's the only flavor I've ever found palatable, but drinking them day in and day out gets old. I've found ways to liven them up without adding a bunch of extra sugar.

1. Coffee - I make extra strong coffee with my French press, almost like espresso, and add it to my shake sometimes. It adds flavor, and lots of antioxidants, without adding calories. Because it's so strong, I can add just a little and it doesn't water my shake down. With chocolate whey, it tastes like a mocha latte (I'm somewhat ashamed to know that).

2. Cinnamon - Cinnamon is one of the latest superfoods due to its apparent ability to reduce insulin response. It also makes my normal morning protein shake taste totally different, almost like chai, while adding only three calories.

3. Baking cocoa - 100% baking cocoa is loaded with antioxidants and flavonoids, and a half a teaspoon will only add 7 calories. The whey protein I recently purchased is very sweet, but not very chocolaty, so this pure chocolate flavor is great.

Isolate your lats with wide grip chin-ups

The biceps assist in just about every back exercise. While your latissimus dorsi pull your arms to your body, your biceps bend your arms at the elbow. Sometimes, especially when first starting, it can be difficult to get a good back workout because your biceps, being a small muscle group, will give out before your back does.

If you have the upper-body strength, try using a wide grip for your chin-ups to target your lats. Grip the bar as wide as necessary so that when your arms are bent at 90 degree angles they are out at your sides, not in front of you. This usually equals out to twice shoulder width. By widening your grip, you allow your arms to travel only in the frontal plane. This minimizes bicep involvement by reducing the amount the biceps must contract before the lats are fully contracted.

There is nothing wrong with allowing your biceps to assist the movement, especially once your lats are tired out and need some help. After my sets of wide grip chin-ups with a pronated hand position (meaning my hands, when above my head, are facing forward), I always switch to a narrow, hands-supinated grip (hands facing back towards me) to get an extra set or two I otherwise couldn't. By mixing up something as simple as the width of your grip and the direction of your hands, you can hit muscles from different angles and get a more intense workout.

Note: Some people make a distinction between chin-ups and pull-ups, but most don't. They are usually interchangeable.
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Extensive bodybuilding.com article on pull-ups
Grass Roots Project article on the importance of bodyweight exercise