There are a lot of fitness tools out there, and I mean a lot. They can track everything from the frequency at which you workout to the level of effort you put into each lift. They come on ipods, probably ipads, computers, cell phones etc. But in my personal opinion - they’re all just too much for me.

At the end of the day, the only thing I care about is how much I lifted today, and how much I lifted 6 months ago. I want to see if the weights I’m lifting now are heavier, if I’m plateauing, if I’m gaining at a steady rate. I want to see if I’m getting stronger in one muscle and not another. It should be relatively simple - the only data I need is the weight I lifted.

This is why I recently built liftrr.com. It only tracks a few exercises (after a quick survey - I determined these were the ones people cared most about) - but all you need to do is enter the maximum weight you lifted on the site, each time you lift. It takes less than a minute, is easy to do, and gives you some really great charts to visualize your progress.

Whats the real benefit though? Besides the ease of use, and the neato charts - the benefit is charting multiple exercises on one graph and being able to compare your progress across exercises and muscles groups.

This is of course just the beggining of the site however, so I’ll be adding some deeper statistics as I get more data points, but for now its really just about keeping it dead simple.

Also, I’d love to hear any thoughts/feedback etc.

Thanks!

-Nash

After writing an article which truly accomplished nothing, I felt I owed it to everyone to post something of value. That said, I’ll be describing a new workout program I’m on called “rest pause” training.

First of all, I injured my lower back - how is not important - but lets just say I decided it was a good time to take a week off (a.k.a. deconditioning) and starting up a new workout program. Based on my diet, I’m cutting but I wanted to try something that increases strength and mass anyway, because I can always eat more if I need to.

Rest pause training essentially works like this:

If I can do 1 set of 5 reps of bench press at 275, 3 sets of 5 bench press at 275, or 285, or 295 etc. seems impossible. But, if those sets have 10-15 second pauses (racking the weight) in between each rep - it makes it much more realistic.

The reason for this type of workout, is you can lift much heavier weight, many more times. Yesterday for example I did 275×5 twice, and then 295×5 once. Whereas I used to do 135×10, 225×10, 275×5, 225×8.

With rest pause training you do 1 or 2 exercises per muscle group twice a week - and you want reverse motions (so your muscles are already pumped up and ready to go). So bench press would be followed by rows for example (or the T bar).

Because you’re lifting so much more weight, this workout program should stimulate muscle growth (assuming your diet is on key).

Right now I do chest and back on Monday & Thursday.

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This article is kind of a hodge podge. You read that correctly, h-o-d-g-e p-o-d-g-e. If you hadn’t realized, we haven’t updated in about 4 months. The reason unfortunately, is we all stopped working out and got really fat. So fat, in fact, that we were too fat to blog…Thats right, we were fatty mcfatfats.  But then, we decided to get back into shape, and quit being fat. Speaking of the adjective fat, when a person is clinically defined as being overweight, or obese, is it an insult to call them fat? I don’t know, but I don’t think so - if they’re fat, and its a fact then - Fat. Boom!

Now, back to reality. I haven’t had time to blog about fitness because I exercise 11 times a week right now. Yes, 11 times a week. I also work full time, 10 hour days, every day. And I’m still building other fitness sites in my free time (more to come on that later). Lucky for everyone (read:nobody) who reads this blog, I have found some time to make a post.

So, working out 11 times a week means: I lift 5 times a week, I do a boxing workout 5 times a week and I do one day of cardio once a week. Yea, that means working out twice a day, quite a few times. As someone who gets shit done - I wonder how people say they don’t have time to workout? If you’re someone who says that, I have a solution for you: sleep less. If you manage your time properly, there is always time to exercise. There is always time for everything you set as a priority. If you’re not ready to seriously commit to exercise, then #1, I don’t know why you’re still reading this post, and #2, don’t ever go to the gym to begin with, because unless you’re going to make a habit out of it, you’re wasting your time.

That said, I have stopped working towards the planche pushup which was recently discussed on yogymbo. I just know its not realistic for me at this time, considering everything else I’m working on. I do however have abs now, and will add the photo later.

As I assumed it all came down to diet, and working out 1000 times a week. What also occurred to me, is that genetics play a big role, and that I fucking hate genetics.

Here is an open letter to people who have natural abs:

come fight me.

Posts to be coming soon:

1. Rest Pause workout training
2. New fitness tool I’m developing
3. Boxing workouts
4. MMA Workouts
5. Dieting while gaining
6. Supplements as maintenance

If anyone has any requests or questions (that they’d like answered in one of those posts) feel free to ask in the comments!

-Nash

One-armed pushups? Child’s Play. One-armed chinups? I don’t sweat that. Blowing up a car with your mind? Amateur hour. You want a real challenge then pay attention to the Planche Pushup.

It’s basically a normal pushup, except your feet aren’t on the ground ha. The only two contact points your body has with the ground are your hands. If that’s not making any sense, then check out this planche pushup progression video. View More…

If there’s one thing I dislike about working out it’s cardio. You’re probably thinking…..this guy is going to give me the same lecture I’ve heard time and time again about how essential cardio is to your workout program. Close. I’ve been around sports my entire life so I’m just going to talk a little about the conditioning exercises and techniques that I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing.

Let me start by reiterating that fact that I really don’t like cardio, unless it’s for a purpose. I’ll explain. I don’t mind running down field to catch a pass or sprinting down the court for a fast break, I just don’t like doing cardio just to do it. I did run track in high school for a year, not sure what I was thinking - apparently I wasn’t.

In this post I will focus on conditioning for football - I will get into other sports in future posts.

Football Conditioning

To get started, it’s important to make sure you’re running the “proper way.” Form running is a very effective exercise used to help develop or improve your running skills. The workout consists of: high knees (10 yards down and 10 yards back), butt kickers (10 yards down and 10 yards back), high jump skip (10 yards down and 10 yards back), stride outs - just like Deion Sanders which is why this is my favorite (20 yards down and 20 yards back), and lastly put it all together and sprint for 15 yards down and back. This workout is great as it effectively dissects the running motion and allows you to work on each individual aspect of the movement.

Read on for more!

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6 days of the week - I eat healthy. What does that mean? Well, right now for me it means no carbs, no sweets etc. Some of those days, I work in an office. What do people in offices like to do? Well, when they’re not on facebook, they’re eating a cake for any number of reasons: birthday, new baby, new kidney stone etc. If its not cake, its pizza. Why? because its Friday, or because certain company goals were reached or because there is a pepperoni surplus and we’re doing our job to help the economy. The bottom line is, in many offices, your peers will find any excuse they can to shove crap down their gullets.

The first thing this directly relates to is will power. If you don’t have the will power to avoid these foods in your place of work - you probably shouldn’t be on the diet to begin with, as everytime you “cheat” its like taking a step backwards.

I understand that will power isn’t easy, so let me try to make an analogy that you can think about to make things easier for yourself next time:

When you’re driving a car, everytime you step on the gas - you make a purchasing decision. Equally so, everytime you step on the brake you’re also making a purchasing decision. With both motions you’re essentially spending money. Just like with your diet, when you eat healthy food you’re consciously making an exercise & body image decision - which says the same for eating unhealthy food. So its something to consider everytime you’re going have that cookie, slice of cake, etc.

I know what you’re probably thinking now. “Its just not that easy, if I don’t eat the cake or pizza like everyone else - they give me shit. Why aren’t you eating this cake? What you don’t eat cake? Who doesn’t eat cake? What are you a health nut? etc. etc.” Its really easy to fall into these traps and just give in to the shit food. The bottom line is this - nobody feels good about eating the cake if they’re concerned about their health or how its going to help them - but they certainly don’t want to be the only ones doing it. Could you imagine being the only one to eat cake if you were surrounded by health nuts? Of course not! If you and one other person decided to eat the cake, it would seem much more acceptable however.

From my experience, the best thing to do in these situations is just say you don’t like cake, or you’re allergic to something in it, or you can see you’re working towards a fitness goal. You might get some pokes here or there, but if you can’t stomach that level of commitment, maybe you shouldn’t be working out anyway.

One of my common theories about working out & diet is, if you’re going to do it - do it all the way. Half-assing anything doesn’t have the same effect. Do an exercise till failure, don’t cheat more than one day on your diet, and most importantly - don’t be a damn baby.

-Nash

Let me begin by introducing myself. My name is James but all my buddies call me Jimmy & I’m from Jersey. I’ve always played sports - football (my favorite), basketball, baseball, swimming, soccer, track, and wrestling. I lifted occasionally through high school but nothing serious. After my freshman year of college I started to get into it a little more.

I was always the smallest kid on the field. I used to eat anything and everything in sight and could never put on a pound. I wrestled at the 112 lb weight class my freshman year of high school! Going into my sophomore year of college i recall weighing in at 135 lbs. I packed on some ”bad” weight, I guess you would call it, my freshman year of college. I started lifting during the second semester with little knowledge of working out. I started using a protein supplement and used to watch the exercises the bigger guys were doing. I started to see changes in my physique very quickly. Soon it became addicting and you could find me in the gym 4-5 times a week. I began to feel more confident about myself and had more energy as a whole.

I remember some of my friends coming up to me saying, “Hey Jim, you workin out or what kid?!” I’m not gunna lie, it made me feel good seeing that other people noticed some of the work I was putting in.  At this point I didn’t really have a set routine in terms of a lifting schedule and exercises. I would just go to the gym and just experiment trying different machines and equipment. At first, I felt like an idiot because I didn’t know how to work some of the equipment and wasn’t really sure how much weight I could do, so it was a little embarrassing to say the least.

After freshman year was over, I moved back home for the summer and didn’t have a gym membership. I also didn’t have much money to get one so instead I borrowed some equipment from my cousin. He gave me an old bench which was adjustable (incline, flat, decline), a bunch of plates, a pair of dumbbells and some other random stuff like an ez bar and other old equipment he never used. I worked out of my garage where it would get scorching hot during those summer days. I tried to convince my mom to let me move the equipment into the basement and turn my brother’s room (he moved out) into a weight room…..she was not having it. I used that old equipment every winter break and summer until I graduated college. It wasn’t worth it to get a membership somewhere when I was just going back to school anyway. The toughest was during the winter months. I used to wear hoodies with layers underneath and winter gloves (the barbell would be cold as ice!!!) It was a little ridiculous but I did what i had to do and toughed it out. If I could, I would workout outdoors all the time during the summer - you get a really good burn when it’s warmer out.

I didn’t get realllly serious about weight lifting until I graduated college and came home. Freshman year I weighed in at 135 and when I graduated I weighed 150. I’m proud to say that I put on 15lbs and no it wasn’t the freshman 15….. it was 15lbs of SOLID muscle by the end of my college career. When I got home in December (I graduated early) I decided enough is enough. The old equipment wasn’t doing it for me anymore and it was time to get serious. I joined a gym nearby and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Currently I go to the gym 5 times a week and have a very healthy diet. It’s sooo much easier to eat right when your at home - thanks mom.

Don’t HIIT it and quit!

So everyone and their momma’s been talkin’ about High Intensity Interval Training(HIIT). What’s so great about it? If you’ve ever seen a sprinter, they don’t look like scrawny long distance runners, they’re usually ripped. This logic applies to HIIT, it effectively helps you keep muscle/pack on lower body muscle while burning fat. In test groups of runners, HIIT vs. steady-cardio, those who train using HIIT burn more calories, lose more body fat, and lose less muscle. So do it to it.

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So, this is part 2 - the workout. It’s been about two and half months since I started this madness and I’ll say this: I love it. I’m in the best shape of my life, and I don’t have any plans to stop anytime soon.

Let me reiterate, the diet is the most important part.

Firstly, I exercise 7 days a week. It’s easy after the first few weeks and you start to notice results. For me, the best part of my day is the end of my workout - when I can really just feel great about what I’m doing for myself. That is a really intrinsic motivator.

read on for the details… View More…

Recently I went through a lot of big changes - moved, new job, etc. etc. I decided with all of these things going on, why not change my workout routine and goals?

That being said, I always used to tell myself and others - that I had a 6 pack at one time, and that if I really wanted to - I could get one again. Well, the more I thought about it, the more I questioned myself, “could I really commit to that kind of diet and exercise regiment again??” I remember hating it, and never wanting to do it again. And I thought about how much I loved crap food.

Well - as you can guess, I decided to go for it. If you’ve read any of my articles about abs, than you know I had to start with the diet. I know I’ve said it 1000 times already, but you’ll never see abs without a proper diet.

FUEL FOR YOUR BODY

As I worked on my diet, I consulted Team Scivation (which is made up of professional bodybuilders). They put me on a diet which essentially eliminates carbs. One thing I really took away from the diet plan, was they said carbs could be considered “cheap gasoline” while the proper fats could be considered “rocket fuel.”

That one analogy put everything into perspective for me. I cut out the grains and all other obvious carbs.

To get a better idea of my diet:

I eat a lot of chicken, tuna, almonds, avacado, shrimp, (some steak), apples, vegetables, and protein shakes.

And one day I week I eat a lot of disgusting food, and drink a lot of alcohol - i refer to this as my “cheat day.”

As I’ve followed this diet for about a month and half, I’ve gotten down to a four pack, but I’m still slowly trimming away.

After finding an appropriate diet which is working for you - I can’t stress enough, be strict.

In part 2, I’ll discuss my current workout regiment.