Having round, well-formed, defined deltoid (shoulder) muscles is a arguably common desire of most men and women who lift weights. They really do provide a lovely shape to the upper body and back. While I don’t coach or often focus on aesthetics, this post may lean in that direction. But fear not. Building functional deltoids […]

Let us thank Ed Zercher, a strong man from St. Louis for this squat variation. The Zercher squat is a bilateral squatting exercise. To be clear, squatting is a movement pattern that involves ankle, knee and hip flexion, into hip and knee extension. We can then load this pattern in any way we choose. The […]

Is the Jefferson Curl safe or no? Many trainers and coaches from the strength world to physical therapy to chiropractic to general personal training have very dogmatic thoughts about the Jefferson curl.  I, for one, used to judge this exercise so hard. The movement elitist in my back-injury rehabbed self was like, “WHY WOULD YOU […]

More muscle and more strength don’t have to go hand in hand. But they most certainly can. As muscle mass is the potential for strength. Keep this in mind throughout today’s post. First off we must remember and program from an understanding that… 1. Strength is a skill, and movement patterns are skills. This means […]

The gym can be intimidating even for experienced lifters. Today’s post sharing gym hacks should help mitigate some of that, or just save you some time and energy during your workouts. These are largely based around my personal preference and experience but I do hope you find them to be helpful. Let me know which […]

Posts like these remind me how young the science of strength training truly is. Just in the past five years or so, we’ve learned so much about what is actually required for building strength. Hypertrophy is an even more interesting topic. But that’s for another time. There are a few things we need to cover […]