The Lats are the Glutes of the Upper Body [DeanSomerset.com]

A quick Google search reveals that only two other people in the history of the Internet have uttered the exact phrase “the lats are the glutes of the upper body.”

(To be precise, there were multiple search results, but the others were merely Retweets.) 

Despite the fact that this idea is not original, it has yet to be expounded on. I gladly take the bait in my new guest post for Dean Somerset.

♫ I like big lats and I cannot lie. You other sisters can't deny that when a guy walks in with an itty bitty waist and a wide back in your face, you get sprung.♫

- Sir Pollenates-A-Lot

Read all about how the back muscles are the buttocks of the upper body here:

>>http://deansomerset.com/lats-glutes-upper-body/

Will CrossFit Make You a Better Athlete?

I love the CrossFit Games. For one glorious weekend every summer, I get to hunker down on the couch for hours on end and get lost in one of the greatest displays of physical fitness on earth. (Now that I think about it, this act of sedentariness flies in the face of the spirit of the competition… Maybe next year I’ll do some pushups while I watch.)

Perhaps I enjoy the Games so much because, as a trainer, I watch people exercise for a living, so watching the best people in the world do it is all the more thrilling. Perhaps I’m a sadist and enjoy watching others suffer through impossibly difficult workouts. Or perhaps I’m just an aesthete who marvels at the beautifully sculpted bodies of all the athletes.

Regardless, the drama of the Games is palpable. Who will win each event? What will the events even be? (Many of them aren’t announced until the last possible second.) How will the outcome of each event affect the overall leaderboard? Whose dreams of being crowned the Fittest on Earth will come true, and who will have to continue working fiendishly for another year in hopes of realizing their goals?

It’s for these reasons that I got pretty fired up the other day when I read an article titled “Why CrossFit Doesn’t Make An Elite Athlete.” As something of a CrossFit connoisseur (after dozens of hours in front of the tube, in addition to years of friendship with box owners), I feel I have a responsibility to set the record straight on the issue of whether CrossFit will make you a better athlete.

The Top 5 Bonafide Superstar Push-up Progressions

Push-ups. Everyone knows ‘em. Very few can actually do ‘em. In fact, I’d wager that only about 38% of gym goers — young or old, athletic or couch potatoic — can do a single good one, let alone multiple sets of multiple reps like I do in the video below. (Go me!) Maybe even a smaller percentage than 38, but 38 is my lucky number, so we’ll go with that.

Why the epically bad performance on such a staple exercise? First and foremost, there’s a definite lack of awareness about what constitutes proper form:

• Proper form begins with the setup: wrists stacked directly under the shoulders and a straight line from head to heels. To achieve that straight line, the abs must be braced and the glutes (butt muscles) must be squeezed. This will necessitate a gaze neither ahead nor directly at the floor, but rather downward at a 45° angle. If you don’t get the setup right, the actual movement is doomed for sure.

• Proper form continues with a slow and controlled descent at least to the point at which the upper arms are parallel to the floor (elbow angle equals 90°), if not deeper if you're able and pain free. On the descent, the elbows should track inward at 45°. When viewed from above, the torso and upper arms should form an arrow, not a ‘T.’

• Throughout this descent, the same straight line from the setup must be preserved without deviation. Everything moves as one rigid unit. (Ipso facto, the push-up is really just a moving plank!) Hip sag and lower back sway are not okay, and the hip pike is also right out. Tension in the abs and glutes must be maintained.

• Proper form finishes with a strong ascent to return to the starting position. The ascent is the exact opposite motion of the descent. No funny business is to be allowed at the hips, lower back, or neck. The upper body should not rise up before the lower body. Unless you are a seal. Which you are not.

The 5 Lower Body Technique Mistakes You've Been Making [Muscle & Strength]

"Your legs aren’t growing. You’ve tried everything: squats, deadlifts, Olympic lifts, lunges, low reps, high reps, two-a-days, protein powders, and blood flow restriction. You name it, you’ve tried it and it didn’t work. Your legs bring new meaning to the expression “hardgainer.”

The one aspect of training that you may (perhaps unknowingly) have failed to master, though, is proper form...."

Continue reading my new article, The 5 Lower Body Technique Mistakes You've Been Making, at muscleandstrength.com. The article includes side-by-side videos of proper and improper form. The videos were painstakingly crafted to make the errors crystal clear for your viewing and educational pleasure.

Click the link to continue reading:

>https://www.muscleandstrength.com/articles/5-form-mistakes-youre-making

4 Easy, Reliable, and Valid Fitness Tests to Measure Progress

Guest Post by Jen Sinkler

“What gets measured gets improved.” It may be clichéd to quote leadership expert Robin Sharma in yet another fitness post, but you know why clichés are a thing? Because they’re based in reality. And this quote nails it.

We’re flush in an age where tracking your fitness is fashionable. From Garmins to Fitbits to Apple Watches, collecting and measuring data has never been easier. But is there something they’re missing? 

When clients and gym members ask how to measure progress, it usually turns into a discussion revisiting what exactly they’d like to achieve. If their method of tracking isn't measuring what they actually want to improve, I’m wasting their precious time.

At The Movement Minneapolis, the gym I co-own with my husband, David Dellanave, we use custom-built tracking software to measure every workout. In the context of strength, we make it easy for members to see if they’ve loaded more on the bar or if they’ve become able to perform a few more reps week by week. They periodically test their strength in the way of five-, three-, or (for some clients) one-rep max attempts, keeping the intensity appropriate for their lifting experience.

As I mentioned earlier, for a test to be valid, it needs to measure what you’d like to improve. Another key piece of the puzzle is finding a reliable test. Meaning, you’re able to reproduce it so that you can compare each data point objectively and learn if you’re headed in the right direction or not. As we say at the gym, “better questions lead to better answers.”

Measuring strength is pretty simple — achieving the same range of motion, can you lift more than the previous week or max attempt? Cardiovascular endurance is also straightforward — assuming you’re running the same distance each time, are your times increasing or decreasing?

But how do we effectively measure athletic qualities? The plot thickens, and I’m so glad you asked. (Or that I pretended that you did, rather.)

Enter the Broad Jump, 10- and 40-Yard Dash and Pro Agility tests. I like these tests for several reasons:

• They measure qualities that are applicable to training goals involving speed, agility, and explosive power.
• Their simplicity allows for reliable results, allowing me to know for certain if I’m moving the needle in the direction I want to go, or if I need to make adjustments in my training.
• They’re easy to do with minimal equipment. You need only a little space, a tape measure, and a stopwatch.

If you’re interested in measuring your current athleticism in this manner, try the tests below.