Yeah, time never stands still, does it? But here's a little bit of hope.

It starts sometime after you hit 30: you get out of bed one morning and your back feels like a stiff branch and your knees are more creaky than they’ve ever been. For at least a few seconds, you take slow steps, one by one, until your body loosens up and feels no pain, like it normally felt when you were a younger person.

That morning, when you got out of bed, you realized that the hill you’ve been climbing is starting to get a bit rockier. All those past years of jumping off rooftops, or lifting extremely heavy weights, is starting to feel it’s damaging effects.  Today you realize it: you’re getting old.

The realization of stiffness, and perhaps even the start of arthritis or joint degeneration, is even worse than finding your first grey hair – at least with the hair you can cover it up. But, this stiffness in your back and achiness in your knees is a bit harder to hide; and you know it’s going to get worse.

Age-spots, wrinkles, thinning skin, aching joints; these are all signs of the proverbial time bomb that is our lifespan. We all want to go out with a bang, but how fast we go and how good we feel during this process all depends on how we treat our bodies from day one. Everything from nutrition, to our choice of exercise, to our choice of “recreational activities”, has an influence on our bodies’ aging lifeline.

How old are you, really?

Grow Younger With This Special Fat

My friend, Julianne VanValkenburg, is in need of our support. Her husband, Tom, is fighting cancer. As you know cancer is a killer and treatment, while often times very helpful, is costly.

Phil Stevens (of Lift for Hope), Sean Casey, Nick Nilsson, and I have come together to offer some really neat ways to get cool stuff and donate all at the same time.

Check out The Thomas VanValkenburg Fight Against Cancer Fund for all the details.

This is the third in a series of 3 guest posts by my friend, colleague, and master-trainer, Matt "Wiggy" Wiggins. Part 1 & Part 2.

When it comes to organizing a circuit, you've got to pick the right kinds of exercises – this we know.  And we also know that you want to put them in the right order.  It wouldn't make sense to do a set of overhead presses immediately followed by bench presses, as much of the musculature used is the same.  When you get to the benches, you're still gonna be fatigued, and that exercise will suffer.  You're better off putting a set of rows or other exercise in between to give the 'pushing' muscles that are used in both exercises a slight rest in between.

At the same time, I'm not (necessarily) a fan of putting super-huge, lower-body focused exercises like squats or deadlifts at the beginning of a circuit, as if you do, you pretty much kill the chance the rest of the exercises in the circuit have at being performed in any sort of real effective manner.  These exercises are not only very demanding, meaning they're gonna sap your energy stores for the exercises later in the circuit, but given that it's your lower body that supports your upper body (duh – lol), you really tax the ability to support/stabilize yourself.

For instance, say you're doing overhead presses and squats in a two-exercise circuit. 

(Yeah, most circuits have more exercises than that – I know.  This is just for explanation's sake, so stick w/me for a second, here.)

In an 'overall' sense, do you think you'd be better off doing the presses, then the squats, or the squats, followed by presses?  In either instance, the exercise done first will get more 'oomph' from you.  The question is, how much will you have to give to the second exercise?

If you do presses first, you'll tire some, but still have a bunch left in your tank in order to do squats.  It won't be as good as if you had done them separately, but still pretty good.

Now, what if you did squats first?  I dunno about you, but squats take it out of me pretty damn good.  You do squats first, and chances are you're gonna have very little left to put into the presses.  (Not to mention if you're doing the presses standing, do you really wanna try to do that when your legs still feel like jelly from a heavy set of squats?  I wouldn't.)

See what I mean?

Then there's exercise selection. 

Since you can't take up all the equipment in the gym, you need to be able to bust out multiple exercises with as little equipment as possible.  Now, how much equipment is "as little equipment as possible" is gonna change depending on the situation.  But when I'm designing circuits, I like to use no more than two different weights (say a barbell and a pair of DBs, two different pairs of DBs, etc), one piece of equipment (rack, bench, etc), and/or something that others can jump in on fairly easily when you're not using it (say a chin bar or set of dip bars).

Now, this isn't always ideal, as when you line up certain exercises, your strength can be vastly different, which would mean that you'd require different weights.  And this would then imply that you'd need different sets of weights.  For instance, because you can deadlift a lot more than you can row, you'd need two different bars.

I adjust this by altering rep ranges a little bit.

I never like to go *too* crazy, but like to keep everything in the 6-8 or 10-12 range.  However, if it means being able to utilize the same weight for more than one exercise, then don't be afraid to alter it a little.

For example, say you had both DB overhead presses and DB rows in a circuit.  To ensure that you could use the same set of DBs for both exercises, you could do a 1-arm DB clean & pushpress (which you'd be able to use a little more weight on) for say 6 reps each side, and then follow it up with DB rows (either one side at a time or both arms at once) for 8 reps. 

Or maybe do barbell cleans for 5, rows for 8, then deadlifts for 10.

Or maybe a 1-arm DB snatch for 6 reps each side, grab the other DB, and do DB bench press for 10.  Put them down, grab one DB, brace yourself, then do 1-arm DB Rows for 10 each side.  Finish the circuit up with 2-hand (one DB) swings for 20 reps.  Toss in jump bench jumps, burpees, and/or chins, and you'd have pretty much a full-body circuit that'd only need one pair of dumbbells, a bench, and maybe a chin bar.

For more, check out www.workingclasscardioworkout.com for a cardio workout that doesn't need gyms, fancy machines, or even make you run a single step.

How time flies, especially when you're injured and up to your eyeballs in work!

A while back, I made a post here, Upcoming Product Reviews, where I was getting set to review two new products (HGH Drops and Testosterone Creme). Lo and behold, I re-injured my elbow (read all about that fun episode here–POP Goes the Elbow and here–Pop Goes the Elbow Part 2).

Let me clarify: Same elbow, different injury. Last time, I ripped up a bunch of insertion points in my bicep and forearm (pulling muscles). This time, I hurt my elbow, on the pushing side (more of a tendonitis than anything).

In any event, I've been out of commission for quite a few weeks. I'm a firm believer in RICE, and I emphasized the R this time

Up to my eyeballs in work (I started a new venture — Internet Marketing Muscle), and with the pain and inflammation not subsiding, I went on a hiatus.

Tonight, I'm back to it!

I will resume my testing and let you know in 3 weeks how things turn out. I'm looking forward to making some incredible progress and I'll share it with you!

Thanks for your patience! Stay tuned for more.

This is the second in a series of 3 guest posts by my friend, colleague, and master-trainer, Matt "Wiggy" Wiggins. Part 1 appeared here.

Last time, I talked about how circuit training had been mis-applied, half-assed, and thereby rendered ineffective by masses.  I also said what a crock of crap that was, and told you how circuit training could be highly effective…if you did it the right way.

Let's look a little more at what should go into a good circuit training workout.

First, you've got to do the right types of exercises.  It doesn't matter if I'm designing workouts for athletes, military/law enforcement, fighters, or just the 'regular joe/jane' (<-my speciality!), I like to use compound movements that use a lot of muscles, allow you to move a lot of weight, lift in an explosive manner, and be super-efficient with your training.

While some isolation movements are Ok to use (hey, I do direct arm training…I'm just as vain as the next guy  , for the most part, I like using the compound movements.  For example, instead of a lateral raise of any kind, I vastly prefer overhead presses.  No chest flyes here – it's bench presses, various types of pushups, and parallel bar dips.  Leg extensions?  Pffft – as if.  All squats, deadlifts, different types of jumps, and other explosive movements.

Second, you've got to map out a series of exercises that can be done in a row with little equipment.  This is kind of a big topic, so I'll expand on this in a future post, but suffice it to say, if you need two different bars, a bench, rack, set of dumbbells, and three machines, chances are that you're not gonna be able to complete your circuits in the proper fashion (very little to no rest between sets) because either you'll be training at home and won't have access to that much equipment, be in a local gym that has that much equipment, but still won't be able to do it because there will be other people that will want to jump in on the equipment and screw up your workout flow, or you'll have to find a place that has that much equipment and allows you to come in and train at 2am when the rest of the world is asleep…and who wants to do that?

Third, you've got to get your rest periods dialed in.  Circuit training is effective because of the manner in which it's performed – stack exercises that work antagonistic (or at least differing) muscles one after another.  This way, one set of muscles is working, while others are resting, yet your heart, lungs, and body as a whole are still working. 

Fourth, you need to use the right amount of weight.  You could have a very effective circuit training program mapped out, but if you do it with too little weight, you simply won't be working hard enough.  Use too much weight, and you won't be able to complete the circuits (or even individual sets) with proper form or explosiveness.

Go to www.workingclasscardioworkout.com for a cardio workout that doesn't need gyms, fancy machines, or even make you run a single step.