Heather Mae French fitness model, figure competitor

By: Joey Rodrigues

Before we get down to business we need to get some things straight! All exercise and training techniques work. It is not my style to sound clich but at the risk of ruining my reputation, everyone is different and everyone responds differently to exercise stimulation. Keeping it perfectly real - there just is no one "perfect routine" that is best for everyone.

Another thing that must be understood, right here - right now is that if you are working out to build muscle, burn fat, enhance athletic performance or just feel good about yourself, you need to train with a purpose. Any action without purpose is meaningless. You need to get it in your mind that you have to make it happen.

I don't want a single person reading this article to go out and try this routine pussy footing around like a primadona in the gym. So, what I want every person reading this right now to do before getting in the trenches with J-Rod is this; Look at yourself in the mirror before you go to the gym and tell yourself,

"I am going to crush it today and give it everything I've got!"

By: Shane Giese

Like my other article, I was inspired to write about cardio for many reasons. First off, many people don't understand the benefits of it and as a result, they don't incorporate it into their training split. Finally, people don't know how cardio will affect their body, and they also don't understand that doing low intensity cardio is much different than doing high intensity cardio.

Benefits

Here are the main benefits of cardio:

* Decreased resting heart rate.
* Decreased resting blood pressure.
* Increased muscular endurance.
* Improved circulation throughout your body.
* Decreased percentage of body fat.
* Decreased stress levels.
* More energy to complete your daily activities with vigor.

Cara Jo Fitness Model

By: Alton Hare

The basis of my advanced chest program is the use of strip sets to take the muscle past normal concentric failure. The chest is not especially well adapted to supersets, because no matter what angle you are focusing on, the chest as a whole is still being worked. That back, however, is especially well designed for supersetting, because the back is composed of several smaller muscle groups, which can all be stressed individually with only slight help from the other groups. Strip sets are also just as good for back, especially if there's a specific muscle group/area in the back that is lagging. So, I like to start off my back routine with two heavy compound movements and then move on to supersetting isolation movements. By the way, I include deadlifts usually in my leg routine, because if you keep your back straight enough you mostly use your legs.

Since you have gone through my basic back routine, you can chins your bodyweight decently, and so you should start out, after stretching and warm up, with three sets of chins. You may get eight on the first set, five on the second, and only three on the last. That's ok, your strength on chins will continue to improve as long as you take each set to failure and do the chins in a smooth, controlled motion. It's a good idea to do a negative on the last rep of your third set, where you take ten to fifteen seconds to lower yourself back into the stretched position, all the while focusing the tension into your lats, pretending their flaring out and blocking the sun or something. Visualization is a powerful technique when training lats/back, because these muscles aren't easily seen without a couple mirrors.

By: MuscleTech

Want to add some serious size to your arms? Big triceps are the secret!

Every bodybuilder wants huge guns. Let's face it - what good is a bodybuilder with small arms? Fielding jokes about "spaghetti arms" and "pea shooters" isn't fun. Fortunately, not many guys are opposed to training their arms, and as a result, there are a lot of pretty good sets of biceps out there.

On the flip side, though, many of these future Mr. Olympians don't have much in the way of triceps mass. Here's a little secret: The true path to giant cannons is by building your triceps. Well-developed biceps look great, but you can't walk around hitting front double bi's all day long. Triceps are what fill up shirtsleeves. Flexed or not, triceps are the ticket to looking huge, no matter what you're doing.

Triceps Anatomy

The triceps brachii has three heads: the lateral, medial, and long heads. These muscles connect the humerus and scapula to the forearm bone called the ulna. It's important to ensure you incorporate exercises that hit all three of these heads to fully develop the back of your upper arm. Simply performing one exercise for triceps probably won't be enough.