Well, believe it or not, these two things actually synergise quite nicely.

I know what you’re thinking, “Do you even lift bro? Bench pressing doesn’t work the biceps!”

Well hold fire with the hashtag GymFails and save your judgment until you’ve read the facts.

Not just a one way street

We asked an expert for their view, and Jo Green Master Trainer from The Health and Fitness Institute’s level 4 personal trainer course says, “Firstly, anyone who has really, truly maxed out on their bench press has probably at least felt their biceps going to work and I can personally say I’ve woken up with bicep DOMS chasing 1 and 3 rep maxes.”

Green continues, “Though the biceps don’t go to work directly on the concentric (pushing) part of the bench press they get put through their paces on the eccentric (lowering) part of the movement.”

Basically your biceps are putting a shift in to make sure the bar doesn’t drop straight onto your sternum and crack a few ribs.

So the stronger (and bigger) your biceps are, the more control and steady pacing you’ll have lowering the weight down before firing it back up.

A steady lowering movement is, in my opinion, one of the keys to a big bench press.

If you let the back gather momentum and drop too fast on the way down you’re going to struggle to reverse it back up again.

So training your biceps will help make you the master of the bar, not the bar the master of you.

More cushion for the pushin’

The bigger your arms are – triceps and biceps – the more mass and tissue you’ll have to, basically, cushion the weight.

This will create a bigger base for you to press with for a start.

But, additionally, all that mass, particularly in your biceps, will create a spring-like effect when your arm is flexed at the bottom of the bench press.

This is, again, going to help propel that bar back up to the top.

Look good, feel good, perform good

This has nothing to do with anatomy, mechanics or anything like that, but simply training a muscle with the good old-fashioned goal of looking good.

Anyone who has run a powerlifting programme, myself included, would probably say their strength gains were great but their arm, and maybe shoulder, development was probably underwhelming at best.

So why not temper that by going ahead and training your arms a little bit?

The biceps are a small muscle group and can be trained regularly because they recover quickly.

Plus, getting an effective bicep workout will not take much out of you or add much time to your workout.

You should be able to create a good amount of fatigue in the muscle in four sets and that’s not going to wipe you out for your deadlifts the next day.

You can go and do 8 Hour Arms or whatever crazy high-volume arm workout is trending if you want, but the fact is arm flexion is arm flexion is arm flexion.

Whichever ways you choose to do it just curl some weight two or three times a week and watch your arms grow!

Simplicity

So that’s about it.

Bigger arms AND a bigger bench – it is possible.

Remember there are no “secret” biceps exercises.

Doing a behind the head, reverse grip, quarter twist, hanging biceps curl is no more effective than a classic EZ or dumbbell curl.

Yes there are nuances between certain exercises but if you’re chasing some strength goals and looking to add size to your arms, stick to the basics and work your ass off.

Over to you

What are your tips for getting a bigger bench?

Or bigger arms?

Or both?

Let us know in the comment section, then go pick up a barbell and put in some work.

The post Bigger Biceps For A Bigger Bench Press appeared first on Gymtalk.

These days, protein supplements have achieved mainstream appeal, and pills and powders crowd supermarket aisles along with cereals, cans of baked beans and bog roll.

Products from Optimum Nutrition, Maximuscle and Ghost Supplements are just as likely to be found in the shopping baskets of wide-buttocked, chain-smoking housewives as they are in the cupboards of narcissistic, singlet-wearing twenty-somethings.

One product that has been emblematic of this social cut-through is the ubiquitous Dyamtize ISO 100, a product now as synonymous with health and fitness as the Tory party is with rotary clubs, owning more than one gilet and rogering livestock.

Product overview

Dymatize ISO 100 is, according to its branding, the world’s bestselling whey protein isolate powder.

To quote Tyler Spraul, NSCA-certified strength and conditioning coach from the gym management specialists exercise.com, the difference between whey protein isolate and regular whey protein powder is that the former has been refined to remove carbs and fats, making it a ‘purer’ form of protein.

This makes isolate a great choice if you’re lactose intolerant or have problems digesting regular whey, but also makes it more expensive than regular protein powders.

In addition, ISO 100 combines regular isolate with hydrolysed isolate.

This is a form of whey which has been broken down with enzymes so that is more easily absorbed by the body (it’s partially pre-digested so your body doesn’t have to work to break it down), making it the closest thing to free-form amino acids you’re going to get.

The super-fast absorption rate of hydrolysed protein allows for quicker recovery after exercise as your muscles can be ‘fed’ sooner (more on this later).

Ingredients

Per serving size (one 32g scoop), the nutritionals of ISO 100 are as follows:

As you would expect with hydrolysed whey, this powder has next to no grams of carbs or fat.

This makes it the perfect choice for anyone on a calorie-restricted diet (i.e. someone looking to get “absolutely fucking shredded”), putting it on a similar footing to something like Isopure Zero Carb.

It’s worth pointing out that this powder also includes tiny amounts of soy lecithin (used to improve mixability) and sucralose (artificial sweetner) which are ingredients that some people on the internet seem to have a problem with, although they’re used by virtually every protein supplement on the market.

These are the same people, bear in mind, that rant about breakfast cereals on Facebook while not thinking twice about smashing through a bottle of Prosecco and a gram of Bolivian marching powder every Friday night.

Taste and texture

ISO 100 is available in a tonne of different flavours (17 last time I counted) mixing staples such as chocolate and vanilla with Wonka-esque concoctions such as ‘Orange Dreamsicle’ and ‘Birthday Cake’.

I’ve tried Chocolate Peanut Butter and it was absolutely delicious mixed with both water and semi-skimmed milk.

The flavour was a little on the sweet site, so bear that in mind if you don’t have a sweet tooth.

In terms of texture, the powder dissolves ridiculously easily with no clumps or grainy bits.

Top marks all round here.

Effectiveness

Now here’s the rub…

The rapid absorption qualities of hydrolysed whey, are, in all honesty, not going to make a blind bit of difference to the 99.99% of people who take this product.

This USP harkens back to the age-old ‘anabolic window’ bro-science, whereby your body supposedly had a 45-minute window immediately after lifting weights where protein had to be consumed else any benefit from your workout would be wasted.

Ultimately, focusing on the rapid absorption of protein is not where your mind should be; instead, focus on the total amount of macros and calories, which is 10 times more important.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this supplement is not going to be a magic bullet.

In other words, there’s no point forking out for expensive protein powders if you’re lifting routine and day-to-day diet is not the very best it can be.

Get your priorities in order.

For a cynic, it’s hard to see the “ultra-fast absorption” angle of ISO 100 as anything more than a marketing ploy to bump up the price tag.

Also, with regard to the low calorie angle, yes, this shake is super-refined with almost zero grams of carbs/fats, but WPCs only ever contain a handful of these macros anyway.

In terms of added calories, this would take you literally minutes to burn off.

Not trying to be a Debbie Downer here, just trying to be realistic about whether these ‘benefits’ warrant the higher price tag for most gym goers.

Which brings us on to…

Value for money

As mentioned, due to the labour that goes into those extra purification steps, hydrolysed whey and whey isolate are more expensive options than whey concentrate, so if you’re not bothered about having a super pure whey with rapid absorption properties, just find yourself a basic concentrate (like Myprotein’s Impact Whey).

However, if superior quality is important to you, or if you have allergy of digestion issues with whey concentrate, then by all means go with ISO 100.

Sure, it’s pricey, but it’s also about as high-quality as it gets for a protein shake.

And, as with all supplements, it gets cheaper if you buy a larger tub.

You can usually pick up a 2.2kg (5lb) tub for around £50 or $50, depending on where you shop.

Summary

With some pretty powerful supplement shamanism, Dymatize have managed to conjure up a protein powder that’s about as pure as it gets.

This makes it a great choice for anyone looking to get super-lean (low carb, low fat) or for those with lactose intolerance or digestion issues.

However, you do end up paying the price for this ultra-refined protein, as Dymatize Iso comes with a much heftier price tag than regular whey.

Buy Dymatize ISO 100 Whey Protein

You can order Dymatize ISO 100 Whey Protein by shopping here at Amazon where it’s usually much cheaper than anywhere else.

Over to you

Have you tried Dymatize ISO?

If so, what did you make of it?

Any other comments or questions?

Please get in touch below – I’d love to hear from you.

The post Dymatize ISO 100 Whey Protein Review appeared first on Gymtalk.

The images that pummel your eyeballs on social media, while intoxicating, are about as authentic as a Lance Armstrong interview on sportsmanship.

Young men, juiced up like genetically modified watermelons, ‘flexing’ with all the grace of a catamite that has endured Caesar’s civil war, anavar and Trenbolone seeping through their pores like sweat from Bill Clinton’s palms at a teen beauty pageant.

Women, who have earned their fifth dan in the dark martial art of Airbursh-Fu, ‘sculpting’ their physiques with the aid of some Silicon Valley app yet claiming it was all thanks to some ‘booty band’ they wrapped around their legs while doing repeated sets of ‘butt clenchers’.

What an absolute clusterfuck of astronomical proportions.

Yet people are buying into this on a day by day, minute by minute basis.

That includes you.

How on god’s green earth do we escape this mess?

First we need to clear something up.

An Instagram physique consumes your life.

A full time job, 3 kids on the go and a beautiful wife you have to keep entertained?

Yet some 22 year old who still rides the wanking chariot at mummy’s house is preaching that you need a ‘side hustle’ and have to ‘hit the gym’ 6 times a week for a ‘push, pull, legs’ and if you don’t you’re a fucking loser who will burn in narcissist fuelled flames while humanity chuckles at your pathetic existence.

As if.

The harsh reality of ‘god tier Instagram genetics’ consists of…

• copious amounts of SARMS/steroids
• a perpetual calorie deficit
• 8 hours unbroken sleep
• stress management akin to that of a Shaolin monk
• even more copious amounts of SARMS/steroids

All this before you even consider what workout program you need to bounce on.

Face facts kid.

Unless you’re an unemployed singleton financed by The Bank of Mummy & Daddy then this is about as realistic as Rolf’s Cartoon Club getting a second commission at CBeebies

However feel free to sip the cask of delusion and watch your life crumble.

So where does that leave us?

OK time to pull up the big boy pants and talk turkey.

Lets’s break this down int the 3 golden rules…

Rule 1 – Change your mindset

Ok I get it, everyone wants to look good in the buff.

Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

However to truly prosper and fill your flagon with gains then you need to eradicate the idea of a perfect physique from your social media frazzled mind.

YOU WILL NEVER BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU HAVE.

It’s not in the human condition to feel satisfied. It’s the reason why we have large Hadron colliders and can fire Land Rovers onto Mars.

The minute your chest finally get’s that ‘pop’ then your calves will start to bother you.

As soon as the bicep peak reveals thyself then you realise that your tricep looks like David Attenborough’s flaccid penis.

It ain’t happening bro.

Time to ditch the mirror fixation

No more running into the disabled toilets in PureGym after a ‘push day’ and flexing hard for selfies while someone in a wheelchair is outside pissing their pants.

You’re never going to look like ‘lordofaesthetics’ on Instagram so just get it out your head.

You need to change your focus and channel that rage into something that you can control, measure and BENEFIT from.

Your actual fitness levels and your ability to kick arse.

Instead of thinking ‘how do i look’, think ‘how do I get strong and conditioned’.

Remember that mantra.

STRONG AND CONDITIONED.

Rule 2 – Get strong

These 2 hour long, 6 day a week sessions that ‘striatedbuttocks’ on Tik Tok claims you need to do, if you want to conquer Mount Gainius are actually holding you back.

Especially if you sip from the ‘natty’ cup

How are supposed to apply the degree of intensity to lay down new tissue, over that whole session?

A natural trainer, especially one under time constraints, needs to strip back the fluff and focus on the big lifts.

No more than 3 per session.

A session that takes 60 minutes to complete.

3 lifts allows you to apply laser focus and unleash absolute fury on those exercises.

None of this dilly dallying bullshit where you’re spending your hard earned energy scrolling on some dumb fuck news feed, populated with plumdicks, fantasising about their bullshit lifestyles.

Figure out an exercise cluster.

For example:

• Squat
• Bench Press
• Barbell Row

Or:

• Squat
• Clean and Press
• Weighted Chins

Figure out your one rep max, pick a rep scheme that changes over 3 weeks then get to work

• 4/5 sets of 10 in week 1 (70% of 1RM)
• 4/5 sets of 8 in week 2 (75% of 1RM)
• 4/5 sets of 6 in week 3 (80% of 1RM)
• Add 2.5/5kg to lifts then rinse and repeat

An abbreviated routine will do wonders for the burnt out trainer who has been meandering their way through some marathon, junk filled workouts.

Set 12 weeks by, block out the white noise and get to work.

Keep yourself away from the shiny shit designed to keep you stagnating.

The Road to Gainhalla is filled with distractions however the true iron warrior gets their head down and doesn’t look up until they reach their final destination.

Rule 3 – Get conditioned

The problem with the chiseled insta-physique is that it conveys the image of fitness however the reality is far different.

Ask these chumps to bust out 100 burpees in a row and within minutes they are blowing out of every hole in their body while shaking like Ozzy Osbourne trying to carry a tray of drinks.

Not to mention the massive damage that taking steroids, particularly ones brewed up in a bathtub in downtown Slovakia, are doing to their vital organs and hormone systems.

Is it any wonder that the life expectancy of a IFBB Pro bodybuilder or WWE wrestler is 14?

Getting conditioned will supercharge your gain potential to a mind blowing level.

I like to break my conditioning up into two components.

Iron Conditioning and Cardio Conditioning.

Iron Conditioning

In order to gain, one must wield the iron.

Kettlebells, dumbbells or Barbells. It doesn’t matter however I personally prefer kettlebells as they’re fun and can be used at home during some down time.

A 10-20 minute mini workout will work wonders on your conditioning levels.

It’s as simple as picking a number and trying to get those reps in as quickly as possible.

Throwing in burpees will increase the temperature.

Here are 2 workouts I use when short on time…

The Wolf

• 50 Double KB Clean & Presses
• 50 Burpees
• For Time

The Iron Ladder

• 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 Rep Scheme
• Double KB Clean & Presses
• Double KB Swings
• Burpees
• For Time

The beauty with these mini workouts is that they can be performed quickly and won’t have a major impact on recovery, even more so if you focus on bodyweight exercises.

5-6 of these a week on top of your strength workouts will raise your game and conditioning to Instagram server melting levels.

Over time you will begin to create your own workouts and challenges using the tools at your disposal.

Cardio Conditioning

Funny how the most important muscle in your body is one you never see on Instagram.

Yet this muscle fuels your gains.

Consider it the engine of our bodies.

The ol’ ticker.

If we want to stimulate heart gains then we need to complement Iron Conditioning with Low Intensity Steady State (LISS) cardio in order to increase our engine size.

Bigger engine, bigger gains.

In order to elicit this response we need to keep our heart rate with a certain range when performing cardio.

110-150 beat per minute is a great starting point.

This can be determined by a heart rate monitor.

If you don’t have one then the talk test is your next port of call.

If you can just hold a conversation then you’re likely in the right zone.

If not then slow down.

The actual cardio activity isn’t important.

As long as we can get out heart rate up there then the magic will happen.

Cardio Conditioning can be achieved by incline walks, running, rowing and cycling.

Try and aim for 2-3 sessions every week in order to add ingredients to the sweet mead from which we extract those gains.

Signing off

So are you tired of the social media bullshit?

Do you have the mental and physical fortitude to actually take charge of your fitness and show those Instagram clowndicks up for the smoke and mirror fantasies that they promote?

Set 12 weeks by on the calendar and focus on getting strong and conditioned

Let’s take fitness back.

Feel free to leave a comment!

The post The bodybuilding illusion and how to get strong and conditioned appeared first on Gymtalk.

Like a digital alternative to posing in Amsterdam shop windows, these preened and polished plebs love nothing more than taking to the grid to display their abs under the pretence of motivating others to get fit.

But, like the red-lit window pane they writhe behind, it’s so transparent.

You know what motivates me to get moving?

Rabid dogs chasing me down an alley.

The threat of having my leg sawn off to be used in feeding time at the zoo, courtesy of hypothetical diabetes.

Also, and mostly: the endorphins and satisfaction of using my body for something more fun than taking the bins out.

(And cleaning up the rancid bin juice which inevitably leaks everywhere only when I’m already having A Fucking Terrible Day. Fuck you, bin juice.)

You know what DOESN’T motivate me to move my body?

Looking at bulging veins that resemble thick egg noodles painted purple.

Seeing a trillion butts.

Reading every inane detail of someone’s dull-as-fuck daily routine which prioritises deadlifting over any other human pursuit (when do these people take a piss, or do their bodies just convert urine directly into muscle?).

Motivators, fitstagrammers, influencers; whatever you call them, I’ve gathered the worst of the bunch right here in the name of pointless pettiness.

They are the bin juice of social media.

Better get scrubbing.

Mark Wahlberg

In brief: Transformers actor on a quest for an eternal life (one that’s not worth living)

Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/markwahlberg/

Followers: 14.8M

Follow if: you want to feel ashamed that the most productive thing you’ve done today is take a massive shit

Mark Wahlberg, or as I’m sure he still loves to be known, Marky Mark from the Funky Bunch, is certifiably insane.

He’s giving you serious receipts on the Gram, doctor; take him and throw away the key.

In 2018, Wahlberg used his Instagram account to chat with fans (or… the… Funky… Bunch?) and he explained his MONSTROUS daily routine to the absolute fucking bafflement of the entire universe.

Kudos to whichever floating plankton decided to ask him about it, because the answer had the potential to be throat-slittingly boring, and yet somehow turned out to be a motherfucking diamond.

A related aside: do you remember that one time when a cheap daybreak flight seemed totally worth the saving, but then you had to actually rise from your grave at 5.30am to shlep to the airport, and you realised you’d rather have your skull punctured by a rusty bear trap than ever see this time of day again?

Yeah?

Well Mark gets up at 2.30am.

Just, y’know, routinely.

Like every day.

2.30.

That’s half past two in the goddamn morning.

It’s the night.

It’s half past two at NIGHT.

And he works out for an hour and a half because he has SO MUCH ENERGY from his twelve minutes of sleep, then has second breakfast, showers for ninety — NINETY — minutes (because maybe he killed a person before second breakfast?), plays golf (GOLF AT 5AM), submerges himself in liquid nitrogen — cool cool cool — and by 8am, has third breakfast (“10 turkey meatballs”).

What an easy-going guy.

Um, what the fuck, Mark?

Classic Mark: https://www.instagram.com/p/BmfocM6HRqO/

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We don’t stop working!! Thank you @equinox for allowing us to continue our 4am club. @performinspired #inspiredtobebetter @dragonmasterbri @bo.cleary

A post shared by Mark Wahlberg (@markwahlberg) on Aug 15, 2018 at 2:23am PDT

In this video, standing in a hotel gym, Wahlberg gives thanks to the manager for opening early for him, as he’s got “shit to do”.

Bet they can’t wait till he comes to stay again: picture 20 bellboys taking a leak into a room-service spinach smoothie.

Amanda Bisk

In brief: Gravity-defying yogi spends a lot of time at the beach

Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/amandabisk/

Followers: 720K

Follow if: you need a reason to delete your hundreds of tedious Ibiza photos from Facebook

Look, I’m not going to dunk on this woman, mainly because she’s unacceptably talented and also kinda helpful (with videos like ‘Busy People Workout’, ‘Low Back Pain Stretches’, and ‘Ankle Injury Workout’, it’s almost like she can imagine a world outside of her own life experiences).

But.

BUT.

I can’t look at another palm tree.

I can’t take another breeze rippling through the long grass.

I can’t swallow another golden sunset over the ocean.

The rest of us live in filthy little boxes surrounded by concrete, Amanda Bisk, and you need to shut the fuck up about your beautiful, enviable life of serenity.

Fuck your inner peace.

Fuck your outer riches.

We’ll keep our gnawing insecurities and corrosive anxieties, thanks.

Classic Amanda: https://www.instagram.com/p/BwUFu25leFO/

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After a full day of rain, it really feels like summer has come to an end here in Perth I L O V E summer. Probably a little too much I’m ALREADY itching to travel to my sunny @activeescapes retreats this year! Next retreat dates: •BALI Festival (Our biggest retreat EVER! 150ppl! ) – May 19 •MALDIVES Luxury Retreat (Kids welcome! ) – Aug 29 •BALI Uluwatu Mega Escape (Limited places available ) – Oct 12 . Come join me on the sunny side #fitnessretreat #bali #maldives abx

A post shared by Amanda Bisk (@amandabisk) on Apr 16, 2019 at 3:58am PDT

Her lithe limbs flung back in an arc, Bisk glows under the rose-pink sky of a Perth beach at sunset.

Suspended in mid air, it seems almost as if she’s flinging herself into the sea, and frankly, that’s where she can stay.

Goodbye, sweet Bisk.

Ulf Gym Bro

In brief: Just torso and bulge, torso and bulge

Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/ulf_gym_bro/

Followers: 96.5K

Follow if: you’re really into torso. And bulge.

Ulf is really, really, really happy with his torso.

He’s worked hard for it, and he’d like you to look at it now, please.

Sure, there’s the occasional jarring photo of a cathedral or botanical garden interspersed amongst the snapshots of taut flesh, but you’re looking at 98% abs when you scroll through his grid (and it seems like his almost-100k followers aren’t mad about it).

But hey, if you think it sounds repetitive… well yeah, you’d be bang on.

It’s not Ulf’s fault, though.

I mean FFS if you call your child “Ulf Gym Bro”, what chance does a guy have, other than to grow up as an Austrian fitness and pilates trainer who posts far too many disembodied knobbly-body selfies online?

Classic Ulf: https://www.instagram.com/p/B71YWHGn0vt/

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Quick Selfies and Back to the Dancefloor. #gaytravel #gayboy #memyselfandi #selfie #towell #holmesplaceaustria #holmesplace #pilatesbody #gymmotivation #gayworkoutselfie

A post shared by Ulf (@ulf_gym_bro) on Jan 27, 2020 at 11:00am PST

Quite often, poor Ulf can’t decide between one chest and balls portrait versus another chest and balls portrait.

They all have their merits, dammit, so why must he choose?

In these cases, his lucky followers get to enjoy a compilation of four low-angle chest and balls photos, all wrapped up in one.

It’s essentially a Rocky training montage in picture form, with the classic soundtrack, “CHEST. CHEST. AND BALLS. CHEST. AND BALLS. CHEST. AND BAAAAAALLS.”

Sing it with me.

Jeff Seid

In brief: Bieber meets Sonic; muscles and moodiness ensue

Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/jeff_seid/

Followers: 3.9M

Follow if: … if… if… No, I’ve got nothing.

Well, well, well!

If it isn’t our old friend, Pecs ’n’ Pout.

A black hole in the shape of a human in the shape of an overgrown carrot, Jeff’s not just YouTubing, but he’s also here on Instagram, serving us steroid realness every day.

Classic Jeff: https://www.instagram.com/p/B4dtzppgwyf/

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Beach day with my boyy

A post shared by Jeff Seid (@jeff_seid) on Nov 4, 2019 at 4:52pm PST

The very epitome of a badly drawn boy, the Seidmeister clutches his dog lead uncomfortably, as if it might contain plutonium.

He wears the obligatory Die Hard vest stretched over the kitchen sideboard (where you might usually expect a set of shoulders), and he looks to the camera with an expression that reads only as a man who has just shat his tiny shorts.

Even the collie is embarrassed to be seen with you, Jeff.

Have a word with yourself.

Casey Fleyshman

In brief: personal trainer + lip fillers = everything has flowers. Say what?

Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/caseylovesfitness/

Followers: 793K

Follow if: you’re suggestible to product placement and really want to drop some unnecessary dough on questionable ‘supplements’

Does Casey of @CaseyLovesFitness really love fitness?

There’s very little in the way of training advice or demos on her grid, so who’s to say?

What IS clear, however, is that Casey loves posing with a basket of strawberries under a cherry blossom tree.

And Casey loves fake laughing while spooning yoghurt from a mason jar.

And Casey loves the cold, hard cash she pockets for pretending to enjoy a vessel full of overpriced sour cow spunk.

Look at her dead eyes.

Casey loves nothing.

Classic Casey: https://www.instagram.com/p/B4pvmxnJdGS/

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A post shared by Casey Fleyshman (@caseylovesfitness) on Nov 9, 2019 at 8:59am PST

She sits down to a bowl of noodle soup while wearing nothing but a plunging, lacy bra.

And why not?

Can’t imagine any terrible scalding accidents that might happen here.

She balances a spoon in one hand and a bottle of ‘LIPOSOMAL VITAMIN C’ in the other, the branding carefully framed by her boob cleavage for a fully voluptuous vitamin vignette.

And although she hasn’t had time to get fully dressed yet, she’s somehow got a truckload of makeup on and is — of course — laughing heartily into the middle distance, clearly cracking up at the possibility of getting first degree burns while she eats her tea.

While ladling vitamin C into noodle soup.

In her underwear.

TOTALLY NATURAL, FOLKS.

Signing off

So… have you been influenced by any of these bozos?

Have you discovered a great new workout routine for your keyboard (block and mute, block and mute, block and mute, 12 reps)?

Can you explain what Jeff Seid is doing to his hair to make it like… that?

As we mop up the bin juice of fitstagram, let’s wash our brains out with saline, and take stock.

Do we all remember the most important lesson from social media?

#BeKind

The post The world’s worst fitstagram accounts appeared first on Gymtalk.

Well that’s basically YouTube.

These annoying tossers on a global scale, chasing their moment in the spotlight, blighting the internet with videos that would even insult the intelligence of a brain-damaged warthog.

A great deal of this sewerage falls under the label of ‘fitness’, hence my previous article/diatribe.

Although uniformly wretched, I did, admittedly, find some of these preening pricks oddly watchable, but in the same way that, say, a slow-motion motorway pileup is oddly watchable.

So, ever the masochist, I decided to return to this online amphitheatre where people would gladly take a mallet to their own grandmother for more views.

What I found was another collection of unforgivable cockery that will make you want to barf up your own pelvis.

Enjoy.

Maxx Chewning

In brief: humdrum lifestyle videos from a walking-talking rectal itch

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/maxxchewning

Subscribers: 357K

Watch if: shopping for grey duvet covers fills you with shivers of excitement

Maxx Chewning is so irritating that if scientists hooked him up to a dynamo they could harvest the electricity generated by his grating personality to power a town the size of Dunstable for a whole year.

He rattles through video after video with the nervous energy of a PE teacher whose penis has been replaced by a live squirrel, and spouts random word-vomit (“What IS going ON guys and WELCOME to my CRIB”) like a malfunctioning Furby.

Maxx’s mantra seems to be ‘why take 30 seconds to say something when you can take 30 minutes’.

His tedious ‘fitness lifestyle’ videos, which each seem to last about five weeks, are the just-kill-me-now equivalent of trying to rectify a bureaucratic error with a foreign-speaking telephone operative.

After a few videos you’ll get the unmistakable feeling that time has started running backwards.

As well as crushingly dull footage of Maxx working out and eating, there are montages of him shopping, doing his laundry and taking out the bins – all filmed with a head-mounted GoPro as if he’s trail running in the Himalayas.

He publishes about 20 videos a week which are all promoted with vague, clickbait titles like “You won’t believe this!!!!”, “She said she doesn’t like elephants…” or “Socks?”.

Virtually of his videos climax in some meandering motivational guff about chasing your dreams.

I say motivational, but the reality is his content is about as motivational as being diagnosed with chlamydia on Christmas morning.

Jeff Seid

In brief: self-absorbed papier-mâché ponce

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOsU2kEp0XscDx6ccPHxPLA

Subscribers: 1.18M

Watch if: you think the apex of masculinity is downing Jägerbombs and smashing pussy

Jeff Seid is a real-life example of what happens on an RPG when you max out the ‘physique’ trait and have nothing left for ‘personality’ or ‘intelligence’.

Jeff is a sigh with pecs, and no amount of zooms, fast cutting and throbbing dance music can mask the fact he has the personality of tepid tap water.

Browsing Jeff’s channel is like being trapped in a groundhog day of grey, enervating tedium.

His videos are basically:

Jeff flexing.

Jeff talking about ‘aesthetics’.

Jeff…

No, that’s it.

As watching experiences go, it’s like having someone pelt you with shit tattoos, fake tan and stringer vests while screaming “fuck”, “shredded”, and “bro” into a megaphone.

Just try and watch the video ‘Jeff Seid: The Next Chapter’ without feeling so much cringe you want to turn your face inside out.

The scene at 3:03, in particular, will have you daydreaming about thumbscrews, trepanning human skulls and loading trebuchets full of piping hot shit.

Paige Hathaway

In brief: amorphous blob of plastic buttocks, fake tan and makeup

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/PaigeHathaway

Subscribers: 137K

Watch if: you want to replicate the feeling of passing a particularly rigid stool

Like the majority of ‘bikini fitness’ influencers, Paige Hathaway’s content is designed less for fitness enthusiasts and more for passing masturbators.

So intrusive are the angles in some of her fitness videos that you can practically map the contours of her lady valve.

Titillation notwithstanding, her content is so boring (“you guys, I love leeks”) it feels like you’re being forced to count grains of sand while listening to Tim Henman narrate ‘The Complete Budget Speeches of the Last 50 Years’.

She wanders around, talking but not saying anything, wearing a constant blank expression, like a semi-sentient baked potato trying to get its head around Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion.

Yet, more execrable than the softcore porn and the vapid chat is the various scams Paige has involved herself in over the years.

As a poster girl for Shredz (the supplement industry equivalent of the Third Reich), she promoted pay-to-enter transformation challenges with prizes of up to $10,000, and then faked the winners so she could pocket the cash.

Forget buying into a scammy competition, I would happily pay to see Paige locked in a windowless room with a very angry hippo.

Bradley Martyn

In brief: the reason North Korean missile scientists get up in the morning

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7aE5B-ZFEAoumyj6FaJ7lg

Subscribers: 2.22M

Watch if: you can quite happily tolerate someone saying ‘bro’ every other word without wanting to staple your ears shut

Bradley Martyn gained notoriety online by filming novelty lifting videos where he would jump out of swimming pools, curl multiple barbells simultaneously, and squat with girls perched at either end of the bar.

Since running out of crazy lifting ideas, he has become just another narcissistic, drug-taking, braindead, materialistic fitness moron who exhibits all the charisma of reanimated roadkill.

His ‘picking up girls in the gym’ videos, in particular, have to be seen to be believed – it’s like watching a reformed rapist trapped in the body of a talking badger trying to navigate basic male-to-female conversation.

In many of his videos, Bradley likens bodybuilding to some kind of Conradian quest for self-discovery – a gurgle of word-turd which should give any self-respecting human the urge to smash up their phone screen with a shovel.

In reality, his content is almost as motivating as writing the word ‘beige’ over and over again until your pen runs out.

Almost.

A better title for his YouTube channel would be “watery fitness queef”, “I would chin a one-legged fox for views”, or plainly, and this would be my pick, “twat”.

He should have just stuck with stunt videos and progressed into genuinely transgressive content, such as inserting a manta ray into his rectum or wanking into his mother’s handbag.

Bradley also caused mild uproar in the fitness community a few years ago when he called out fitness YouTubers for being fake, which is a bit like being criticised by Fred West for accidentally stepping on a lady’s foot on a lurching bus.

For under his carapace of stringer vests, dianabol and copy-and-paste motivation there lies nothing but a monstrous yawning vacuum.

Brad Castleberry

In brief: human skidmark with roid rage and the integrity of an eggy fart cloud

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Q-Sc7zuIENjKJphNB5lkg

Subscribers: 38K

Watch if: you want to test the theory that subjecting your brain to extreme dreck will cause it to slowly dissolve out of your mouth

Aside from being a humongous tosser and looking like something from the Book of Revelations, Brad Castleberry is mainly known for lifting fake weights and passing them off as elite lifts.

While his videos depict him shifting weight that would earn him numerous powerlifting titles (i.e. benching 300kg for reps), he has declined competition invites, despite being offering five-figure sums to put his money where his mouth is.

Brad’s also clearly been taking so many steroids he’s on the cusp of a nuclear, rage-induced mental breakdown.

One misjudged comment about his acne and he’s going to start skewering passing pigeons with an umbrella, 100%.

In the comically bizarre video ‘Bodybuilder vs Swimmer’, Brad wins a 10m swimming race against a random member of the public (female) and then whoops like he’s just beaten Michael Phelps.

So animated is his celebration that you wouldn’t be surprised if it climaxed with Brad crushing the poor girl’s head like a Wotsit.

His behaviour is so cringe-inducing that if he existed in Victorian times, he would have been paraded around the country in a tightly sealed caravan, alongside people with three-legs, hairy faces and distended genitals, just to be gawped at.

Whenever he opens his mouth, out tumbles a deluge of feculence so vast it threatens a messy brown tsunami that will extinguish all life on earth.

Yet, for whatever reason, people subscribe to him – but these are no doubt the same people that would click ‘play’ on a video that was titled ‘watch to catch syphillis’ i.e. fucking morons.

Signing off

Fitness YouTubers offer us an interesting glimpse at humanity, and what it shows, essentially, is that we’re fucked.

Goodnight.

PS – I promise that every time someone shares this article, a squadron of hammer-wielding death dwarfs will be unleashed into the world to bring karmic balance to YouTube, cheers.

The post The worst fitness channels on YouTube: part 2 appeared first on Gymtalk.

As anyone who’s clicked “filter by recent results” will testify, the vast majority of this content is proof, if it were needed, that humankind is hurtling towards its inexorable demise, and that 200 years from now the last of our knuckle-dragging descendants will crawl back into the sea, never to be seen again.

While this soul-crushing avalanche of dreck does not discriminate (all languages, ages and topics are catered for), one of the biggest contributors is, without doubt, the fitness industry.   

If this content had an aroma, it would be that of an overflowing nightclub toilet which in addition to miscellaneous human effluvia has been seasoned with dead turtles, vulture vomit and cat piss.

After sitting through hours of footage to research this article, I have no hesitation in saying, quite conclusively, that fitness Youtubers are such terrible humans that, in the distant post-human future, their legacy will live on in whispered interdimensional warnings, alongside genocide, slavery and Noel Edmonds.

Here are the very worst offcuts from this fetid trough of societal offal…

Vegan Gains

In brief: militant vegan super troll

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr2eKhGzPhN5RPVk5dd5o3g

Subscribers: 346.5K

Watch if: you think all meat eaters should be showered in napalm

Vegan Gains (real name Richard Burgess) is so unlikeable he would make a Nazi sodomising a unicorn with a barbed wire dildo seem like an affable chap.

Ostensibly a promotion of vegan values in relation to bodybuilding, his channel also delights in misogyny (women are rebuffed as “fucking bitches”), taunting cancer patients, and chiding his own grandfather for a fatal heart attack (“he ate meat so he deserved it”).

Each video consists of Vegan Gains, looking like what would happen if you stretched the skin of a boy over the body of a ring-tailed lemur, parroting some dubious pro-vegan studies, performing crackpot sketches, and calling anyone who eats meat a plague on humanity.

This unhinged torrent of vitriol is, however, betrayed by eyes that have known deep sorrow.

This is quite clearly someone who is trying to repress some deeply disturbing childhood memories.

Look closely and you’ll see, every now and again, a look of horror play across his face as he recalls, perhaps, Daddy executing his only friend, a hamster, with a bolt gun, or Mummy making him darn and disinfect some second-hand condoms.

His waspish demeanour (the result of gene splicing with a crow during insemination?), whiney voice and self-righteous, obnoxious attitude come together to create something so odious I feel the need to invent a new word – megatwunt.   

This is as much as I can do without resorting to hand gesticulations so violent I would dislocate both of my shoulders.

Despite preaching the health benefits of veganism, Richard hardly glows with vitality.

Instead, his appearance more closely resembles that of a 14-year-old who has recently discovered internet porn and hasn’t left his self-styled masturbation grotto in 2 months.

Simeon Panda

In brief: fake natty conning teenagers out of their pocket money

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Sim86

Subscribers: 701.5K

Watch if: your favourite natural lifters are Rich Piana and Kai Greene.

Simeon Panda has a physique so unnatural that if he started growing scales, speaking parsletongue and rotating his head 360 degrees it wouldn’t seem terribly irregular.

Yet he relentlessly lays claim to being 100% “lifetime natural”, just so he can flog cookie-cutter workout routines to gullible teenagers and earn sponsorship deals from equally culpable supplement companies.

It’s “just a combination of consistency, great diet and intense training”, he says, with all the conviction of a Catholic minister whose excuse for polishing a 6-year-old’s ballbag with talcum powder was that he “believed it to be a porcelain statue of St Francis of Assisi”.

According to Panda, the reason he looks so cartoonishly massive is that “when I get a good pump I literally grow about 1/3 bigger lol”, and the reason he looks bigger than Arnie naturally is because he trains harder, despite not even being genetically disposed to bodybuilding.

Hmmmm…

In one video he ‘proves’ his drug-free credentials by passing a polygraph test.

Just to put this into context, this is the same method Jeremy Kyle uses to prove whether or not some toothless arse thistle who claims she once gave birth to a barn owl is telling porkies.

I don’t care how many lie detector tests you pass Simeon, you look like the lovechild of a roast turkey and a minotaur, which is pretty bloody conclusive to me.

Perhaps he’s been lying for so long he can no longer discern fact from fiction.

It would be great if his next ebook is just one big cheese-dream which slips out unchecked.

Imagine some poor sod forking out £55 to learn that lean muscle gain can be facilitated by bathing in spaghetti, dressing as a 16th century Russian Cossack and riding around on a giant badger.

On the subject of dreams, I have a recurring one in which Simeon Panda is mauled in slow motion by a stampeding heard of buffalo while Mozart’s Requiem plays pianissimo in the background.

It’s so beautiful I wake up in tears.

Connor Murphy

In brief: narcissistic twatcast from shirtless spunk valve

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNPPl_oX8oUtKVMLxL13jg

Subscribers: 2.28M

Watch if: you want to cringe so hard your face becomes a fist

Where to start with Connor Murphy… a man whose personality is the aural equivalent of a lumpy fart.

Connor’s videos consist of him wondering around like a lobotomised penguin looking for women to show his naked torso to.

In most videos, there’s a ruse to going topless, whether that’s to prove that abs are more important than fashion sense or that all women are basically cock-crazy sex lunatics.

In fact, I’m being pretty generous by describing any of these situations as a ruse, because, fact of the matter is, this bumwipe would cite being asked his name by a Starbucks barista as reason enough to go shirtless.

It’s like he underwent Pavlovian conditioning as a boy to remove his clothes every time he senses a vulva within a 10 metre radius.

Here’s hoping he was also conditioned to toss himself into a woodchipper before he ever gets to procreate.

Suffering through these videos is like a workout for your cringe reflex.

If you can manage to get all the way through a single video without hitting pause every two seconds, your face will feel like it’s witnessed, first-hand, the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf.

In one ‘prank’ video that has to be seen to be believed, he accosts a young lady in a supermarket, takes off his shirt, scampers up a pole, and then performs pull-ups from a hanging beam.

All while this poor girl looks on with the faintly embarrassed look of someone whose nan has just referred to “brown people” at a family meal.

Brittany Dawn

In brief: fitness advice from someone you wouldn’t trust to boil an egg

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4urAor1TKMTzlR2N9wFioA

Subscribers: 227.6K

Watch if: you want every happy memory you’ve ever had slowly and painfully sucked out of you

Imagine sitting on a pine cone covered with ants, repeatedly punching yourself in the head and shouting “DUH DUH DUH” as loudly as you can.

This goes some way to simulating the experience of sitting through a Brittany Dawn video.

Looking like the result of a union between Beaker from the Muppets and a blow-dried hamster, Brittany Dawn is a self-styled “fitness guru”.

A label that, nowadays, carries about as much weight as a degree from Hull university or a childrearing reference from Rolf Harris.

Her fitness tips (“Tips to avoid bloating”, “Best mochachinos for weight loss”, “5 key steps to a sexier perineum”) seem like they were gleaned from a glossy woman’s magazine supplement that has been fed through a shredder and then reassembled by a gibbon with a glue gun.

But of the many crimes this spunkbarrel has committed in the name of views, it’s Brittany Dawn’s ethical bankruptcy that riles most.

This is someone who exploits young girls with eating disorders to flog “personalised” nutrition plans (all identical) which are essentially directions to starve yourself.

Then when her clients complain that her services are, to paraphrase Nelson Mandela in his review of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, “a load of fucking shite”, Dawn refuses refunds and blocks the client. 

So prevalent, in fact, are her scammy business practises, that a Facebook group has been established to catalogue and draw attention to her various swindles.

A woman with the integrity of a shotgunned cowpat, Brittany Dawn is someone who would do literally anything to raise her profile.

Punch a squirrel in the face?

In a heartbeat.

Film a recruitment commercial for a cabal of satanic shape-shifting paedophiles?

100%.

Fashion the skin of a murdered baby into a bongo drum and beat out the rhythm of a Nazi death hymn?

Tick (in fact I think she’s already filmed a video for that).

Christian Guzman

In brief: monotonous lifestyle videos from a charmless personality vacuum

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Christianguzmanfitne

Subscribers: 923.5K

Watch if: looking at a chest of drawers sounds like a fun way to spend an evening

If your idea of 30 minutes well spent is watching HD footage of the world’s dullest automaton working out, driving a car, grocery shopping, and giving motivational speeches about eating grilled chicken, then meet Christian Guzman.

A man with all the personality of a box of freshly wrapped tupperware, Guzman is living proof that people will watch anything.

His staggeringly boring “lifestyle” videos, which frequently clock in at over 30 minutes (!), have amassed thousands of views, presumably by a demographic of easily impressed six-year-olds, gurning morons and masturbating chimpanzees.

Watching his videos, Guzman’s inflated sense of self-worth is such that you’d be forgiven for thinking he’s been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize or achieved some history-making feat of athleticism.

In reality, the sum of his endeavours is maintaining a lean physique, selling t-shirts and spouting motivational platitudes cringier than a middle-aged geography teacher dancing to Gangnam Style at the school disco.

Even footage of Guzman walking his dog or eating falafel is edited to make it look like the tightrope scene from Man on Wire.

This is a guy so vain he would botox his ballsack to make it look more aesthically pleasing.

He also looks like the sort of person who can only achieve orgasm while listening to his own pre-recorded words of encouragement (“Come on Christian, aim for the moon, if you miss at least you’ll be among the stars…”).

As Guzman is clearly hellbent on documenting every facet of his life, here’s hoping that his eventual downward spiral into opiods and cinnamon rolls after contracting weapons-grade ghonorreah brings on a mental breakdown so unprecedented he slowly osmoses into the fabric of the cosmos, never to be seen again.

Signing off

Jesus Christ suffered on the cross so we wouldn’t have to.

In a similar way, I’ve watched these videos so you will never have to.

So, yes, that does make me a Christ-like figure, although one with infinitely more capacity for suffering, as crucifixion doesn’t even come close to approximating the torment of watching Christian Guzman eating porridge in slow motion.

Maybe one day I’ll uncover a fitness channel which is truly brilliant and epoch-shattering, then again it’s more likely that I’ll live to see the royal family admit that the Queen actually died in 2001 and all her subsequent public appearances have actually been performed by Andy Serkis in a motion-capture suit.

I’m out – if you think I’ve missed any other horrendous fitness YouTubers from this list, please comment below…

Update: if you’ve got the stomach for it, you can check out part two of this article here.

The post The 5 Worst Fitness Channels On YouTube appeared first on Gymtalk.

It’s up there with getting injured, waiting 30 minutes for the squat rack to become free and your great aunt Marjorie trying to convince you that a banana contains just as much protein as a joint of beef.

As any seasoned lifter will tell you, the moment you stop adding weight to that bar is the moment your muscles start to sag, your testosterone levels plummet and your penis shrivels up like an erupted fish arse.

But what to do?

Slit a chicken’s throat over the dumbbell rack?

Write to your local MP?

Forget the iron for good, take up cycling, grow an inflated sense of self-worth and enrage every other road user by flouting traffic laws and just generally acting like a flowering geyser of piss?

Fortunately, the answer is none of the above.

In fact it’s pretty simple.

If you want to get bigger and stronger, then, to quote Greg Nuckols, the most reliable way (though not the only way) is, quite simply, to do more.

Increasing volume to increase gains is certainly not a new concept – it was taken as gospel by the ‘golden era’ crowd, and was preached from the pulpit of gains by one of bodybuilding’s most-loved personalities.

Leroy Colbert

Along with Steve Reeves, John Grimek and Reg Park, Colbert was a legend of 1950s bodybuilding.

Although he didn’t win any Mr Universe titles, his many appearances in ‘Your Physique’ and ‘Muscle Power’ magazines eared him wide renown.

Leroy Colbert’s magazine cover shots were striking to behold, looking like something dreamt up by Lysippos after a few too many bottles of cabernet sauvignon.

Although it was his arms that secured Colbert a place in history (he was the first man in history to grow 21-inch biceps), his chest was equally magnificent, combining dense major pectorals, a clearly etched serratus and upper pectorals which flared flawlessly outwards, dwarfing those of his peers.

Colbert was a lifelong proponent of the full-body approach to building muscle and his routines involved high volume, typically calling for six sets of 6-10 reps per body part.

In addition to this day-on, day-off foundation, Colbert prescribed a series of volume-spiking ‘blitzes’ to maintain constant progress.

The routine

Writing in the January 1959 edition of ‘Muscle Power magazine, Colbert introduced this routine in an article entitled ‘Compel your chest to grow with a seasonal super set blitz!’.

Much like Colbert’s ‘Full Body Blitz’, which we covered previously on the blog, the routine is designed to force continued muscle growth after a period of stagnation, but, this time, with a focus solely on the chest.

Colbert, whose own chest measured in at a bulging 52 inches, cited this particular routine as his tried-and-tested answer to flagging gains.

Built around super sets and drawing on the Joe Weider ‘flushing principle’, this routine amps up the volume of chest work to “holy-jesus-I-can’t-feel-my-arms” levels in order to manipulate progress.

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Notes

Workout frequency

Incorporate the blitz into a standard three-day-per-week full body workout for a period of three weeks (nine workouts in total).

Repeat every three months.

Duration

The blitz should take an hour to complete, so if your typical full body workout takes an hour, set aside two.

Order

Place the blitz at the beginning of your workout when your energy levels are high in order to get the most from it.

Super set method

Both exercises in each ‘group’ should be supersetted.

For example, in group one, perform one set of eight reps on bench press and then immediately – without pause – perform one set of eight reps on straight arm lateral raise.

Take a quick 30 second breather (no more) and repeat.

Then take another 30 second pause and perform the final super set.

On completion of each group take five minutes rest (you’ll need it) before starting the next one.

Poundage

For all exercises, select a weight which will allow you to perform all prescribed reps without hitting failure.

‘Flying’

To perform this exercise, hold two dumbbells over your thighs while you lie supine on a bench.

Raise the dumbbells (they should touch over the thighs) upward and backward until they are directly at the back of the head and in a horizontal position to the floor.

At this point the arms are separated, each coming down its own side until both again meet over the thighs.

It’s really just a giant fan-like movement.

Summary

How many times have you seen frustrated gym-goers perform the same sets and reps, month after month, and make no progress?

Assuming there are no fundamental errors with the routine itself (i.e. absence of main compound lifts) and technique is good, not increasing volume is usually the culprit.

Bottom line: if your chest has stopped growing then increasing training volume will increase gains.

A word of caution, however.

Leroy Colbert’s Super Set Chest Blitz is not something to be entered into lightly.

If your typical workout is essentially an hour of checking Instagram with a few bicep curls and flys thrown in when the hot receptionist looks your way, then you’re in for a shock.

Nine workouts of this and you’ll have proof enough that a sadistic god presides over the weight room.

And, as with any workout that places high stress on the body, it’s important to reiterate that lifting weights does not make you big and strong; recovering from lifting weights makes you big and strong.

Make sure you’re getting enough calories, protein and essential nutrients to fuel growth, and make sure you’re getting at least eight hours of interrupted sleep every night.

If these two factors aren’t in place it doesn’t how much volume you’re working through, you won’t make any sustained progress.

Over to you

Thinking of giving Leroy’s chest blitz a whirl?

Any comments or questions about this routine?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below!

The post Leroy Colbert’s Super Set Chest Blitz appeared first on Gymtalk.

Scenario #1: 2018

You Google “how to build muscle”.

9,970,000 results… well, fuck.

You start cycling through articles about creatine supplementation, anabolic windows, supersets and dropsets, optimal rep ranges for hypertrophy, periodisation, what is cockdocking (you get distracted), maximum recoverable volume…

Shitting buggery this is complicated, where do I start?

Scenario #2: 1958

You walk into the local gymnasium which smells of sweat, rust and Bovril.

What’s that over there – a human man or a baby rhino, it’s hard to tell?

Whatever it is, it’s deadlifting 500 pounds, smoking a fag and wearing Brylcreem.

“How do I get big and strong”? you ask.

He dumps a barbell on you.

“Kid, lift this until you’re exhausted, stuff your face with food, rest up and get some sleep, then come back again in two days time.”

Now, while these two scenarios may be exaggerated (only slightly), many people starting their fitness journey in the modern era will almost certainly be afflicted by the former example of analysis paralysis.

With all the noise out there on social media, conflicting advice in internet articles, science bogged down with complexity for complexity’s sake, the supplement industry constantly selling you shit, it can be difficult to know where to start and who to believe.

And, sure, while the 1950s were plagued with economic austerity, polio, having to crap in a garden shed and the public subjugation of blacks, gays and women, at least things were simple when it came to building muscle.

You picked heavy things up and put them down again, you ate lots of food, you slept, and you took life easy.

This was the uncomplicated gospel preached by the top bodybuilders of the day – all of them natural, all with attainable physiques.

Anyone could follow their weightlifting routines and dietary advice and, with consistency and perseverance, achieve success.

In this article we’re going to look at one such routine from a true bodybuilding legend – Clarence Ross.

Clarence Ross

Winner of the 1945 Mr America contest, Clarence Ross was one of the most recognisable faces of ‘golden age’ bodybuilding.

He adorned the cover of numerous muscle magazines in the 40s, 50s and 60s and was, along with John Grimek, one of only two men to twice defeat Steve Reeves in competition.

Ross was one of the first bodybuilders to pioneer the thick chest, and his classical physique, a Da Vinci wet dream made flesh, a near perfect blend of size and definition, is today still regarded as one of the best to ever grace the stage.

Importantly, like many of his contemporaries, such as Grimek and Reg Park, Ross was as strong as a bull.

His outlook was that if you wanted to build muscle, first you needed to prioritise getting strong and powerful, as, quite simply, strength equals size.

Ross could squat over 400 pounds for 10 reps and, on one occasion when training together, Park was shocked to see him nonchalantly incline press a pair of 160 pound dumbbells like they were baby cauliflowers.

And, like the other golden era greats, Ross acquired his strength, muscles and knowledge of what worked best by his own trial-and-error (covered below), not by reading peer reviewed articles in the NSCA about bosu balls or subscribing to some attention-seeking cumtrumpet on YouTube.

Training evolution

In the late 1930s, when Ross started training, he followed a single set system for building muscle, which was the conventional wisdom of the time.

These three-day-per-week routines would usually comprise a dozen or so exercises, with no more than one set of ten reps performed per exercise.

Although he gained 30 pounds in 18 months on this routine, Ross plateaued and his interest in bodybuilding waned.

Then, in 1942, while enlisted in the forces, he came under the wing of veteran bodybuilder Leo Stern, who reignited Ross’s interest in lifting weights with what he termed a ‘split set’ routine.

These routines were a type of circuit training where exercises were revisited throughout the workout.

Again, the routine was performed three days per week, and Ross began to relax his form and bring in more ‘cheating’ style movements in order to shift heavier weight.

This routine yielded significant gains in size and strength, and, with a few modifications, such as splitting upper and lower body work into two sessions on training days, introducing some specialisation blocks and Olympic style lifts for power work, Ross used this protocol to train for the 1945 Mr America contest.

The Muscle Man workout

After his victory in 1945, Ross became one of the first bodybuilders to advocate a new trend – the ‘multiple set system’ for building size and strength.

After the Mr. America contest, which I am proud to have won, I went into a regular set series program for the first time, performing this routine three times a week, 3 sets, 10 reps each exercise: squat, calf raise, bench press, bentover rowing, upright rowing, barbell curl, reverse curl, triceps curl and situp.

Later in life, Ross advocated this training methodology as the most effective way to build size and strength, and admitted that his progress would have been far better had he followed it when starting his training.

During the post-1945 era of his training, Earle Liederman, a writer for Muscle Power magazine, watched Ross train at Bert Goodrich’s gym in Hollywood (where Steve Reeves also trained and worked as an instructor) prior to the filming of ‘So You Want To Be A Muscle Man’, a 1949 comedy short in which Ross starred.

This exact workout appeared in the January 1950 edition of Muscle Power magazine in an article entitled ‘Watching Clarence Ross Train’.

Here is the mammoth full-body workout in its entirety (including sets, reps and poundage) which, according to Liederman, took Ross two hours to complete, taking roughly one minute rest between all sets and working out like “a mass of energy leaping from one thing to another with forced determination”.

Notes

Here are some guidelines for following this routine.

Workout frequency

Work out three times per week on non-consecutive days.

For example: Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.

This full-body approach allows you to hit the main compound lifts three times per week while still getting fours days to recover and grow.

It should be self-evident that squatting three times per week is going to disrupt homeostasis and trigger growth far more effectively than squatting once per week.

Progression

For each exercise, start the routine with a weight you can easily lift for the prescribed reps.

Then, in a linear progression fashion, add 2.5kg/5lbs to the bar each session.

If progress stalls, make doubly sure you’re in a caloric surplus and getting enough rest and sleep, as this is usually where the problem lies.

If you are, then it’s time to change things up – I would suggest something like Reg Park’s 1960 ‘Strength and Bulk Training’ 5×5 course.

As Ross pointed out, a routine “must be changed from time to time to make it more progressive and interesting to avoid the sticking point in training and to keep enthusiasm going strong”.

Nutrition

In his own magazine articles, Ross advocated a balanced and substantial diet, with lots protein, clean carbs, and fruit and veg.

He avoided “fattening” foods, and, like many of golden era bodybuilders, drank inordinate quantities of fresh milk.

For hardgainers, he prescribed drinking a glass of milk five to six times per day, between and with regular meals.

Recovery

Ensure you are getting at least eight hours of uninterrupted sleep every night, and, in the words of Ross, as much as possible “take life easy”.

Remember, your muscles don’t grow when you’re lifting weights, they grow when you’re recovering from lifting weights.

Cheat reps

Like Reg Park, Ross was an advocate of employing ‘cheat reps’ with certain movements such as barbell rows in order to up the intensity.

Cheating, in this case, refers to using added body motion and looser form (e.g. using shoulders and legs for rows) to allow the handling of heavier weights.

Heavier weights = better strength gains.

Record progress

Ross always maintained a careful record of all of his workouts and routines, detailing sets, reps and exercises, as well as notes concerning his week-to-week progress.

He also stressed the importance of tracking progress with photographs:

Having photos taken is a more satisfactory way of evaluating the physique than looking in a mirror or relying on the observations of friends.

For with pictures you have a permanent record and can study each detail of your development at your leisure and intelligently decide what corrective training measures must be taken.

Slow and steady wins the race

Bodybuilding is a long-term pursuit, so don’t set yourself up to achieve your goals overnight.

Allow yourself enough time to get into shape – if not you’ll grow impatient, worry about progress, commit training errors or maybe even incur an injury.

Keep adding weight to the bar, maintaining a caloric surplus, and sleeping eight hours a night.

Be consistent and you’ll get there.

Summary

Clarence Ross’s approach to training was characterised by simplicity, consistency and hard work.

If you’re new to training or have hit a plateau, take a cue from Ross and his buddies from the golden era, not from a £79 workout PDF that’s being flogged by some roidy moron prescribing HIIT, tricep kickbacks and protein pancakes.

Cut out all the extraneous bullshit and get back to old-school basics – a heavy barbell, full body workouts three times a week, and plenty of good quality food and rest.

Stop wasting time on the details, on articles discussing the latest research into optimal hypertrophy rep ranges, and focus on the bigger picture, i.e. doggedly getting your squat up to 200kg.

Do that and everything else will fall into place.

Over to you

If you’re thinking of giving this routine a go, or have any comments or questions about anything raised in this article, I’d love to hear from you.

Please get in touch via the comments section below!

The post The Clarence Ross Muscle Man Workout appeared first on Gymtalk.

As well as ushering in a malaise of cynicism and despair, crippling hangovers, an aversion to doing anything other than drinking tea in my pyjamas on a Friday night, and the weary acceptance that we will all soon die in the incendiary light of a nuclear explosion, I’ve found myself in a reflective mood.

One of the constants in my life has always been been sport and fitness, and while I have by no means set the world alight with feats of strength and athleticism, I’ve certainly learned a great deal, especially in regard to lifting weights, which has been something I’ve pursued on and off for most of the last decade.

In my late teens and early twenties I was your typical bicep-curling, six-pack striving, non-squatting, skinny novice, who had no sodding clue what he was doing.

Below are some pictures which perfectly encapsulate this point in time – a period where I was seemingly in training to become ‘Britain’s Biggest Tosser’.

These were posted to Facebook and inundated (justifiably) with responses such as “sort your life out”, “bender”, “you look like a post-op Clare Balding who has just discovered protein shakes”.

In my defence, topless photos are permissible as youthful vanity, whereas having a photo of a car as your profile pic will always make you a cunt.

Over the next 10 years, by trial and error (mostly error) I figured out what worked and what didn’t when it came to muscle and strength development.

I reckoned that some of this accumulated knowledge might be of use to someone out there, so here it is…

Eat more

If I could only dish out one piece of advice to my 18-year-old self, it would be this.

If you want to get bigger and stronger, eat as much you can.

When I first started out, I believed the pump I was getting in the gym was the sole driver of muscle growth.

A key distinction, which took me so many years to grasp, is that whereas muscles are placed under stress by lifting weights, actual growth is facilitated by adequate diet (and rest).

And adequate diet, in the context of getting big and strong, means consistently putting yourself in a caloric surplus with good quality food.

It doesn’t mean chugging down a protein shake during the 45 minute post-workout anabolic window and then scarcely eating or grazing on Doritos and cocktail sausages for the rest of the day (true story).

If you’re serious about making progress, you should be eating at least four meals per day which comprise good protein sources (meat, fish, eggs) with some decent carbs (rice, potatoes) and huge mounds of fruit and vegetables.

To drive muscle growth, protein intake should be around one gram per pound of bodyweight per day and your daily caloric intake should fall between 3,500 and 6,000 calories.

Don’t worry about meticulous calorie counting with apps like MyFitnessPal, nobody’s got time for that, just get it all in, eat as much you can.

Take your diet as seriously as your workouts and you’ll be on the right track.

To grease the wheels, old-school strength and bodybuilding coaches – including Mark Rippetoe – recommend, with decades of experience behind them, that ectomorphs consume a gallon (8 pints) of whole milk every day (GOMAD) while starting out, adding in pints with meals and at regular intervals during the day.

To novices this might seem like an awful lot of food, but if you want to disrupt homeostasis and force muscle growth, eating everything that isn’t nailed down is as important – actually more important – than lifting heavy weights.

If you’re anything like I was at 18, you’re probably thinking that all this food is going to destroy you hard-earned six pack.

And you’d be right.

But here’s the truth, which you probably don’t want to hear:

No-one, apart from you, gives a lubricated fuck about your low body fat and six pack abs.

In a t-shirt you look just like any other average guy who doesn’t lift.

Narcissism aside, do you really think women are going to find your skinny frame more attractive than a guy with wide shoulders and powerful legs who could hammer throw you over a two story building without breaking sweat?

Chasing aesthetics is not going to get you strong and it’s not going to get you laid.

Pick up a fucking fork.

Focus on getting strong

If you want to get big (naturally) you need to get strong.

Bigger muscles are a side-effect of getting stronger, and by focusing on strength training (with adequate diet and rest) everything else will fall into place.

I may be paraphrasing here, but I’m pretty sure it was Ghandi who once said, “If you’re not lifting heavy fucking weights, what’s the fucking point?”

For a novice, the most efficient way to get strong is with linear progression on the main compound lifts (squat, deadlift, overhead press, bench press).

At this stage in your training, your routine should NOT incorporate any of the following:

• ‘Hypertophy’ rep ranges (the typical 3 x 8-12 you see in bodybuilding routines)
• ‘Bro splits’ (‘arm day’, ‘ankle day’, ‘spleen day’)
• Time under tension
• Negative reps
• Mind-muscle connection
• Resistance machines
• Isolation exercises
• Supersets/dropsets
• HIIT/excessive cardio

If you’re just starting out and your lifting regimen draws on any of these, you’re not just wasting your time but hindering progress as well.

Yes, you’ll see no doubt see some initial gains from some of this bodybuilding guff, but this will be down to the well-documented ‘novice effect’, whereby any weightlifting work will disrupt homeostatis.

Standing on one leg while juggling and having your rectum vacuumed by a chimpanzee will give you muscle gains… up to a point.

Bottom line, if your routine does not revolve around consistently adding weight to the bar on the big lifts, five years down the line you’ll be no stronger and look just the same.

“But this study… blah blah… hypertrophy… blah blah… if you’ve read the literature, it actually proves… blah blah… and this guy on YouTube said…”

For fuck sake, who do you think is going to end up with bigger muscles, someone who has steadily built their 5RM bench press to 130kg or someone who can bench 3 x 10 with 50kg using a reverse grip on a bosu ball with 20 seconds rest betweens sets?

Don’t be a cum swamp, use some common sense.

Master the main compound lifts

Rather than mastering the squat, bench, deadlift and press as a novice, I, like many others, spent far too much time on unnecessary shite.

After listening to unsolicited advice from the biggest guy at Dunstable leisure centre gym (imagine a shaved Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles after 10 years of nonstop bicep curls and multiple ASBOs) and reading every issue of Muscle & Fitness magazine, I became an ardent disciple of the school of muscle confusion.

“Your muscles won’t grow if you keep hitting them with the same exercises every week” was what my new coach would tell me every time I saw him (usually in Asda car park where he would walk around in a high-vis jacket – I later found out he didn’t even work there).

Despite the fact his advice typically resembled the maniacal musings of someone who hasn’t left a fruit machine for 7 hours (politicians are all shapeshifting lizards, the best way to finger a girl, how he once wired a sex doll up to the mains, etc etc), I believed him.

I was also determined to try all those useless routines in muscle magazines: “8 Week Bicep Building Bonanza”, “Power Up Your Pec To Pussy Ratio”, “The Secret Kryptonian Muscle Building Secret Superman Uses To Bend Iron Bars”, “How I Spent 10 Years In A High-Security Sex Dungeon But Still Maintained My Muscular Chest”.

There was only one way I was getting massive and that was by constantly attacking my muscles from different angles and confusing the merry shit out of them.

I would constantly rotate exercises, routines and rep ranges to stop my muscles getting used to the stress I was putting them through, and I would smirk at the rugby players who would come in and spend 45 minutes squatting with heavy weights three times a week.

Idiots, if only they knew…

I must have tried 10 different variations of the bicep curl, high rep prone legs curls, one leg bosu ball squats, reverse-close-grip-paused incline bench presses, Arnold press standing on one leg.

There was not a proper squat or deadlift in site.

And I got nowhere.

Even when I did figure out where I was going wrong, the compound lifts that started to find their way into my workout were done with terrible form.

If I’d only got proper instruction on how to squat, deadlift, bench and press when I started out, and spent the following years perfecting my technique and persevering when things got tough rather than just switching up my programme again, I would have prevented years of wasted gains.

Increasing volume, intensity and frequency on the main lifts are the only effective stressors for long-term increases in strength and muscle size.

Constantly varying exercises is not an effective training stress.

Train like a beginner, not Arnold Schwarzenegger

One of the first bodybuilding books I owned was The New Encyclopaedia of Modern Bodybuilding by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I remember the excitement I felt flicking through these pages for the first time (this is it! this is like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai!) and jotting down what was to be my new, devastatingly effective training routine.

Following Arnold’s secret Olmypia training principles was going to transform me from a skinny weakling who bore a passing resemblance to the bully from Karate Kid to an irresistible He-Man with a sex life so extreme that it would make the world’s most penetrated porn star throw up in disgust.

If only.

What I failed to appreciate at the time was that Arnold was a genetic freak who had been training for decades and used powerful anabolic steroids.

Following his high volume split routines to the letter caused me an awful lot of soreness, a great deal of fatigue and precious little in the way of strength and muscle gain.

I failed to grasp that in order to produce optimal results as a novice I needed to train like a novice, and not a seven-time Mr Olympia.

The training stress was far too high and because I was training almost every day and recovery was insufficient to drive adaption.

As a beginner, the most effective way to make progress quickly is with full body workouts, three days a week, focusing on the main compound lifts.

This schedule (at least for 4-9 months) perfectly balances training stress and recovery allowing you to add weight to the bar every session and drive adaption/growth.

This approach to progression is called linear periodisaton.

As a teenager, this is the protocol Arnold followed to establish his foundation, not high-volume splits, and the one he would recommend to novice trainees at his gym and dub The Golden Six.

Similarly, as a beginner Arnold also followed the blueprint laid down by Reg Park, his hero and mentor, who first established the 5×5 protocol now prescribed in popular routines such as Starting Strength and Stronglifts.

Learn the difference between ‘training’ and ‘exercise’

The vast majority of gym goers accomplish precious little other than working up a sweat and making themselves sore the next day.

And this is all well and good if your goal is to maintain your current physique or lose weight by burning calories.

But most people, if they’re being honest, want more than this.

As a teenager I certainly did.

I wanted to be big and strong, I wanted to fill out a t-shirt, I wanted women to look at me and immediately feel the urge to expose their nipples and fanny in my general direction.

But what I was doing in the gym usually amounted to mere ‘exercise’ – not proper training geared to muscle and strength development.

When I was chasing a big, lean, muscular physique, a typical session would be 10 minutes warm up on the cross trainer, 10 minutes foam rolling and stretching, one random compound lift (whatever equipment was free), then maybe 3 sets of 8-12 reps on 3-5 isolation exercises, capped off with a max effort mile on the treadmill and some situps.

Sure, this was a busy routine which burnt a load of calories and got me working up a sweat, but I wasn’t developing strength and size, which was what I really wanted.

I was trying to cover too many bases – get strong, get big biceps, lose bodyfat, have razor abs, improve aerobic fitness (basically Crossfit).

There was too much cardio, too much unnecessary shit, and not enough time spent under a progressively heavy barbell, which was evident in my lack of real progress on the compound lifts.

If you’re new to the gym, avoid my mistake and follow a long-term training schedule which is wholly geared towards driving improvement on the main lifts, not just a random ‘what shall I do today’ programme that amounts to a whole lot of nothing.

Don’t waste money on supplements

Although the fitness industry would have you believe otherwise, you do not need supplements to get big and strong.

There is nothing in supplements that you cannot get from an adequate diet.

If you are training properly, eating properly and resting properly there is no need to throw your cash away, especially if you’re a beginner.

People that stack their cupboards high with pills and powders often do not want to hear the simple, hard-to-swallow truth:

The only way you’re getting bigger is through lifting heavy weights, maintaining a caloric surplus and perseverance.

It’s just easier to keep telling yourself that your programme is to blame or you’re not getting enough creatine or that maybe this new study from Japan which shows how eating a boiled rhino’s vagina can enhance cellular function is the answer to your training plateau.

Fact is, there’s no supplement that works as well as doggedly getting your 5RM squat up to 150kg and eating a shit tonne of meat and veg.

The only reason to take supplements is if you honestly struggle to maintain a healthy diet or you’re just too lazy to get yourself organised.

In that case, get yourself some good quality whey protein to make sure you hit a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight every day and take a multivitamin and fish oil as some general nutrition insurance.

But, honestly, how hard is it to have sardines or mackerel a few times a week instead of resorting to pills?

And do you really need a big tub of whey every month when you can get the same amount of protein from whole milk and regular meals?

And while creatine might be one of the most well-studied supplements out there, my personal experience, in over ten years of lifting, is that it delivers very little in the way of performance benefit.

And while I’m not going to fly in the face of science (I trust the research), I believe that most lifters would be better off forgetting about supplements that may or may not enhance performance by 0.05% and instead focus on something more important.

Ultimately, a good night’s sleep and a strong cup of coffee will do more for your squat PR than religiously supplementing 5g creatine every day.

Sleep!

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” used to be the adage of someone I knew when I was in my early twenties.

Well, he is dead now.

Turns out all those 3am smack sessions aren’t very good for the heart.

The point being, I guess, is that you should look after yourself, and consistently depriving yourself of sleep is a surefire way to fuck your body up.

And it should go without saying that injecting heroin is probably going to hinder progress on your 5RM deadlift.

If you’re training for any sport, getting at least 8 hours sleep every night is one of the most powerful weapons in your arsenal.

Sleep is a powerful anabolic aid that is absolutely critical to the stress/adaptation model (along with nutrition).

It is where the most potent recovery occurs, and deserves as much attention as your nutrition and training.

Don’t treat it as an inconvenience that happens at the end of your day, take it as seriously as mapping out your training schedule.

And by 8 hours, I don’t mean getting into bed at 10:30pm, scrolling on your iPhone for an hour, bashing one out, nipping for a quick wee, finally getting some shuteye around 1am, then waking up at 7 to hit ‘snooze’ every 15 minutes.

Do everything you can to ensure you’re sleeping soundly for a full eight hours – invest in a decent mattress and pillow, get some proper blinds, read a book before dozing off (it helps, apparently).

Signing off

So, there we have it, seven pieces of advice that would have spared my 18-year-old self a lot of wasted time, effort and money.

I apologise to those of you who were expecting a grand reveal of some powerful Soviet muscle building secrets that the Kremlin have been keeping under lock and key since 1920.

Truth is, to see results you don’t need to sacrifice a baby unicorn or commit to ten years of study in a temple in Kathmandu.

For the most part, you just need to rely on common sense, consistency and hard work – i.e. squatting heavy for a decade.

And while a lot of this stuff may elicit a “no shit” response from some – like hearing that Hitler once upended a table and punched someone in the head after losing a game of Risk – most beginners, like my 18-year-old self, fail to see the wood for the trees.

But, to strike a final philosophical point, as most articles of this nature do, if I could go back in time, would I really change everything?

No of c… YES, YES I FUCKING WOULD.

Obviously I would.

By now I would be absolutely bloody MASSIVE.

Over to you

Experienced lifters out there – what advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?

Let me know in the comments section below, I’d love to hear from you!

The post Advice To My 18-Year-Old Self appeared first on Gymtalk.

Well, sort of.

Not as intimidating as being chained up in a Belgium sex bunker, being asked to call a coin toss by Anton Chigurh or having your CV marked up by Claude Littner.

Or being forced to sleep opposite a pickled jar containing the severed head of your murdered lover as a punishment for being unfaithful.

To be fair on Peter the Great, this was fairly mild as punishments from Russian Czars go – the equivalent, nowadays, of purposefully making your partner a rubbish cup of tea.

But, for newcomers especially, the gym can be a discomfiting environment.

As you wonder out of the changing rooms for the first time, you’ll feel like a new recruit in a buddy cop movie who’s been transferred to a department in a corrupt precinct.

You’ll get dirty looks from the tough guys in the free weights area (all ‘on the take’), an unhinged Mel Gibson type will accost you at the water fountain with unsolicited fitness tips and weapons-grade viagra, and there’ll be a by-the-books personal trainer trying to avenge the memory of his father who was murdered in the line of duty (crushed by a bosu ball in the steam room).

As you get to know the lay of the land you’ll pick up a few valuable titbits.

You’ll learn, for example, that the gym is a place where you can seemingly break wind with total impunity.

You’ll learn to dodge that one guy who wonders around with a Foreigner t-shirt, flip-flops and a permanent demiboner.

You’ll learn to avoid peak times where the gym floor resembles a flock of seagulls going mental over a dropped ice cream.

And, importantly, you’ll also learn that in the gym there is a big difference between what people say and what they actually mean.

One wrong word and you’ll be in a predicament that escalates quicker than a late-night confrontation with Joe Pesci in a petrol station.

“I didn’t call you a prick, Joe, I was just trying to grab a Lucozade from the fridge.”

So, if you’re new to lifting weights and want to avoid committing any faux pas that will land you in hot water, here is a collection of common phrases which we have kindly decoded for you…

Gym lingo – translated

Are you using this?

You’re quite clearly not using this, I’m merely feigning politeness, so please get off your phone and move before I lodge this bottle of Lucozade Sport so far up your rectum you’ll be shitting electrolytes for the next six months.

Have you got many sets left?

I’ve been wanting to use this piece of equipment for the last 15 minutes and if I see you attempt one more set I’m going to burst a blood vessel in my ballbag.

Do you need this 20kg?

I’ve made the assumption just by looking at your pathetic bag-of-bones physique that you will have no use for these weights, so I’m just going to take them, deal with it you human skidmark.

Can I work in with you?

Even though the gym is empty, I am now going to annoy you by unracking your weights, making small talk about protein supplements and sweating everywhere when I could have just done something else for 10 minutes.

Can I get a spot?

You’re the only person who actually looks like they know what they’re doing in here so can you please assist me with this lift.

I’m maxing out

I’ve put far too much weight on this bar and will certainly not be hitting the prescribed reps, but I don’t want to admit this by removing any plates.

One… more… rep

I’ll shit a potato before I ever lift this weight so please get ready to step in.

It’s all you!

This is 50% me, you have no business lifting this weight, you’re wasting both of our time, and I have a good mind to drop this bar on your stupid face.

You’ve got this!

If it wasn’t for me supporting this weight you’d be going home in an ambulance with a spine that looks like a dropped burrito.

You’re looking massive!

What steroids have you been taking?

I don’t want to get too big

I no absolutely nothing about lifting weights or human physiology.

It really engages your core

I’ve learnt everything I know about weightlifting from a pullout in The Mail On Sunday entitled “Sizzling Summer Abs” and therefore believe crunches to be more effective at strengthening your core than heavy squats.

Squats are really bad for your knees

My PT qualification came free with a box of Kellog’s Crunchy Nut.

It’s really good for muscle toning

I couldn’t be much more of a cunt if I tried.

You need to confuse your muscles

I will believe anything I read – even if it’s been scrawled in human faeces on the wall of a public toilet by a blind toddler.

This machine will hep you get rid of belly fat

If someone told me that fisting your grandma burns body fat I would be the first to give it a go.

Squats/deadlift/pressing really kills my back/knee/shoulder

I can’t be bothered to work hard or spend time learning correct form so I’m just going to do some isolation exercises instead.

I leg press 400kg

I don’t want to squat or deadlift so I’m distracting myself from the real task at hand with an exercise that’s about as pointless as a clay sculpture of a dog’s colon.

I’m not lifting heavy at the moment

I have never lifted heavy in my entire life.

Lightweight baby!

Everybody look at me, look at me, I’ve watched some Ronnie Coleman YouTube videos, look at me!

I don’t go to the gym much anymore

I’ve been working out four times a week every week for the last year.

Hmm, interesting, I’ll give that a try

What kind of babbling bullshit is this?

Do you still train much?

Bloody hell you look small.

What are you lifting today?

I have nothing else to say to you but we’ve made eye contact now.

Signing off

Hopefully this decoded gym lingo will save some of you newbies from social embarrassment next time a fellow lifter strikes up a conversation with you.

Alternatively, you can just eschew all human interaction by donning a massive pair of headphones and scowling at everyone who makes eye contact with you – it works for a lot of people.

If you have any more translations of common gym phrases please get in touch via the comments section below, I’d love to hear from you!

The post Common Gym Phrases And What They Actually Mean appeared first on Gymtalk.