Weight training exercises are essential in the development of specfic strength. The front squat is one of these and should be an important aspect of your programming

When performing the front squat you must learn to ‘rack’ the bar on the front of the shoulders and hold the bar in the ‘Olympic’ position.

This is a key technique, especially as it is a foundation exercise needed before to transition into the full Olympic lifts such as the clean.

The exercise starts by sitting down into your heels by pushing your hips back. Maintain a tight core by engaging your abs and keep your elbows high as you go down.

Now the depth to which you go will depend upon a number of factors that you may or may not be able to change (but that’s for further discussion at another point).

The important thing is that you do not go so deep that your ‘tail’ bone starts to rotate under you, the risks to your lower back are just too large to any benefits you could gain.

The picture to the left is the lowest I am willing to go before I start to compromise my spinal position.

Everyone is different and you need to keep with in the safe zone to be safe…some people will undoubtedly tell you that you are not squatting deep enough but until you address the causes of your lack of range the most prudent thing to do is be cautious…you’ll still get some great gains from doing it any way.

Especially as most people are trying to be fit for daily functioning not fit for weight lifting competitions.

It’s important in the bottom posistion of the front squat to keep your weight back into the heels and the elbows as high as you can.

You initiate the up movement by driving the hips forward keeping you weight into the heels and generating as much power from the glutes and hamstrings as possible.

The beauty of the front squat is that recent research suggests the loading on the hips and the thighs is similar as to that of the back squat. Also the lumber spine forces are also of fairly equal loads.

The major advantage the literature reports is the reduced knee compression forces in the front squat compared with the back squat.

This can be incredibly important in reducing the amount of wear and tear in the knee joint and is especially pertinent to the heavier people who’s knees are forced to bear increasingly larger loads.

Of course don’t forget the main reason for lifting this way is to learn one of the key components of the Olympic clean.

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This guest blog post was written by fitness and nutrition author Tom Venuto I have his permission to share it with you.

The way to break the weight loss plateau then is to:
(1) re-stimulate metabolism and re-set fat-burning and starvation hormones, and
(2) re-establish the deficit.
(3) KEEP AFTER IT!

The question was, “How do I do that? More cardio, more weight training, manipulate my diet?”
You could do all of the above. Eating less or exercising more can both increase a deficit. But one thing you might want to do first, is give yourself a little break. Take your calories up to maintenance level, maybe for a week.

The idea there is not to try to accelerate fat loss, because what you’re actually doing is removing your calorie deficit for a short period of time. What you’re trying to do is facilitate the fat loss when you jump back into it.

It gives your body a physiological break from the stress of dieting; it resets some of those starvation hormones and stimulates your metabolism so when you go back to the calorie deficit, your body responds again.

You also get mental break from the diet as well, which makes it easier to stick with the program when you go back to it.
You could also use a calorie cycling approach, to help prevent yourself from hitting another plateau, and we already covered calorie and carb cycling in the last call.

I also recommend, because so many people underestimate how much they eat, don’t take any chances. Count your calories, or at least become really aware of the portion sizes and maybe even consider keeping a journal.

You’ve probably been told many times by a lot of different “experts” that you don’t have to count calories. But when you’re in a plateau, I’d recommend that you stop guessing and really get serious about what you’re taking in.

Then what you need to do is reestablish that calorie deficit using every tool at your disposal.

Use nutrition by pulling back your portion sizes. Or use cardio. And by increased cardio, I mean increasing energy expenditure. You could increase your frequency. You could increase your duration.

But increasing energy expenditure is not necessarily doing longer workouts, just burning more calories. You could also take the same amount of time that you’re spending right now and increase your intensity.

The whole idea is just burn more calories and stimulate metabolism, which gives you your deficit back again or you can pull back your food intake and give yourself a deficit again from the food side.

There’s more than one way to do it and I don’t think that you should lock yourself in. Use all of the variables and remember that there are TWO sides to the energy balance equation, not one.

For more info on Tom’s program **click here**

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This guest blog post was written by fitness and nutrition author Tom Venuto I have his permission to share it with you.

Weight loss plateaus can be frustrating, even maddening! It happens especially when you get down to that “last 10 lbs” or when you drop a lot of weight, and you hit the “good” body fat category, but you’re an “overachiever” and you still want to get even leaner… all the way to “ripped”, or at least lean enough to see your abs. It’s a challenge, but there IS something you can do about it. I revealed the answers in a recent teleseminar called the Super Lean seminar, which I recently had transcribed and I’ve posted it below for all my website visitors. Breaking a weight loss plateau is not difficult, it simply requires out of the box thinking. You will find the solution fascinating because part of it is the most counter-intuitive move you can imagine.

QUESTION: Tom, I know you often say that to get to the point where you can see your abs, you need to reach single-digit body fat. But what if I hit a weight loss plateau at about 12% body fat? What do I need to do to break the weight loss plateau and get my fat% down to single digits? Should I do more cardio, more weight-training, or change my diet somehow?”

ANSWER: You could use any of those strategies. You could manipulate your calories, do cardio more often, do more cardio sessions weekly, or increase the cardio intensity. You could also change your weight training. You shouldn’t limit yourself to only one option.

One of the problems I see with quite a few programs is that they’re too dogmatic. If you hit a weight loss plateau, the person with the most flexibility in their approach is the person who’s going to be most likely to get through that plateau.

The first thing though is to understand what a plateau really is. This is important, because if you were losing weight, but now you’re not, there’s only one thing that that could mean; you were in a calorie deficit but you’re no longer in a calorie deficit.

You may be wondering why that happens.

There are four primary reasons you hit a weight loss plateau:

The first reason you hit a weight loss plateau is because your metabolism decreases. While this does not completely stop fat loss, it does slow down fat loss. If you’ve been cutting calories, especially if you cut them severely, your body adapts by decreasing the metabolic rate. That’s sometimes known as the “starvation response” or “Adaptive thermogenesis.”

The second reason you hit a weight loss plateau is that you need fewer calories after you lose weight. Calorie needs are directly tied into your body weight. One problem is that after people lose a lot of weight, they tend to keep eating the same way they were eating when they were heavier.

So they’re feeding a smaller person the way they were when they were a bigger person, but when you’re a smaller person, you don’t need as many calories, even at rest (your basal metabolic rate is lower).

A third reason you hit a weight loss plateau is that when you move that smaller body, you’re not burning as many calories. If you strap on a weighted vest or heavy backpack and go out and hike up a hill, you can tell, obviously, that if you’re lugging around extra weight, you’re burning more calories. So now can you see why, after you lose weight, you burn fewer calories?

The fourth reason you hit a weight loss plateau is that most people either cheat on their diets or they forget to record part of their food intake. This one requires a little bit of honesty with yourself. Even if you don’t do it intentionally and you don’t “cheat” per se, unconsciously, we’re all terrible at estimating how much food we eat.

Some studies have even showed underreporting calorie intake as much as 50%. In other words, you say, “I’m only eating 1,200 calories a day, but I’m stuck at a plateau!” but you’re really eating 1,800 calories a day which doesn’t give you much of a deficit.

All of these reasons for plateaus get amplified in the later stages of a diet, because biologically speaking, your body is doing everything it possibly can to get you to go off your diet and to get weight to stabilize.

After a long period of dieting and after a large weight loss, your body cranks up the appetite, stimulates cravings and tries to trick you into eating more.

The leaner you get, the longer you’ve been dieting and the more aggressively you cut calories, the more your body tends to defend its weight, and hold on to remaining body fat.

So it’s really common to hit that plateau when you’re dieted down and leaner. Usually it’s nowhere near as difficult for the overweight person to start losing weight as it is for the lean person to get even more lean. The last 10 lbs is usually a lot harder than the first 10.

If you think about it, it’s pretty unnatural from a biological perspective to walk around with really low single-digit body fat. It’s not beneficial from a survival-of-the-species point of view to have low body fat. So this metabolic adaptation becomes more pronounced the leaner you get.

you’re also at a higher risk of losing muscle, because extra muscle is not economical when there’s a calorie shortage. Having extra muscle is like having an engine that’s bigger than you need – It’s like a gas guzzler.

The ultimate answer to why you plateau, why that last 10 pounds is so hard to lose and why it’s hard to break into those single digits is that you were in a calorie deficit but for all of the reasons mentioned above, you’re no longer in deficit.

In part two we’ll look at ways to break the weight loss plateau.

For more info on Tom’s program **click here**

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This guest blog post was written by fitness and nutrition author Vince DelMonte I have his permission to share it with you.
While some individuals are strictly interested in obtaining muscle for aesthetics, for most people, this isn’t an interest. Instead, you’re more interested in knowing what health benefits weight lifting will have for you…

Far too many people overlook the many health and fitness benefits that weight training has to offer, and because of this, experience problems down the road with their body such as decreased bone density, a slowed metabolic rate, increased stress levels and other negative consequences that are associated with constant stress.
Increased Bone Density

Weight lifting, being one of the best weight bearing exercises you can do, will increase your bone density and help ward off osteoporosis or stress fractures in the future.

Many people think running is the best exercise for increasing bone density, but this isn’t necessarily true. If the truth is told, running actually promotes muscle breakdown in the body, while weight lifting, being an anabolic process, helps to promote the building of tissues.

Therefore, weight lifting is going to be much better at preserving your bone mass, not to mention it’s far less impact than going for an hour run.

Decreased Frequency of Injuries

When you strength train, not only are your muscles going to get stronger, but you’ll also work the ligaments and tendons that are connecting bones, muscles, and other tissues, thus reducing the chance they become injured when participating in other physical activities.

If you’ve ever been injured, you know just how frustrating this can be. In about 80% of all injury cases, the injury is a direct result of a tendon, ligament, or muscle not being strong enough when a stressful force is applied.

Since weight training will really hit all those deep tendons and ligaments, it’s the best injury prevention out there.

Reduction of Health Related Risks

Numerous studies have demonstrated that regular weight training can have a positive effect on health by showing reductions in the rate of insulin resistance, blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer.
If you couple a solid weight training program then with a well-thought out diet, you’ll be putting your best foot forward at warding off these chronic problems

Prevention of Fat Gain
The more you weight lift, the higher your metabolism will be, thus the more food you can eat while maintaining your weight. If that isn’t good news for your future and the fight against body fat, I’m not sure what is.

Now, with all of this said, one big problem many people run into is the thinking pattern that using a muscle building program will make you big and bulky.

This is most certainly not the case.

Let’s look at an analogy to gain an understanding of this.

Pretend you have two teams and each are going to try and build a house using the exact same building technique.

One team is given 10,000 bricks to construct this house, and the second team is given only 1,000 bricks.

Who’s going to build the bigger house?

The choice should be obvious – team one since they have more bricks to build it with.
Now, think of those bricks as being the calories you put into your body. Unless you’re supplying enough calories, you aren’t going to build really big muscles. This is precisely what makes bodybuilders look like bodybuilders.

It’s not just about the way they train, but more about the way they eat (if you’ve ever had a teenage son in the growing process in your house, you likely know just how much food must be consumed when growing at rapid rates).

Whether it’s growing in height during puberty or trying to build bigger muscles later on, calories must be supplied for this growth process to take place.

You can’t build a house out of nothing. Likewise, you can workout all you want, but if those building blocks – in the form of amino acids, carbohydrates, and dietary fats are not there, you aren’t going to see too much muscle growth.

So, don’t get caught thinking that just because you add weight lifting to your workouts, you’re going to develop large bulky muscles. If you control your diet, this simply will not happen.
So, hopefully it is clear now that just because you’re weight lifting, it does not mean you will end up with bulky muscles as a result. Many people make this incorrect assumption – but it really is the diet that makes all the difference in how this weight lifting will shape your body.
When you make the decision to work with me using my 6-Pack Ab Quest program, I’ll take you through the weight lifting and ab techniques that will provide maximum results with minimal effort on your part (why spend more time in the gym than you have to?), as well as provide you with meal plans that are custom designed to ensure you get the best results from your training without the muscle bulk – in fact, the plans are formulated to help you shed the fat so you look leaner and more defined.

Not choosing to include weight training as part of your current workout program is without-a-doubt the biggest mistake you could make as far as your long-term health and fitness level is concerned. Don’t let this exercise pass you by any longer.

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This guest blog post was written by fitness and nutrition author Mike Geary I have his permission to share it with you.

It is common to hear fitness professionals and medical doctors prescribe low to moderate intensity aerobic training (cardio) to people who are trying to prevent heart disease or lose weight. Most often, the recommendations constitute something along the lines of “perform 30-60 minutes of steady pace cardio 3-5 times per week maintaining your heart rate at a moderate level”.

Before you just give in to this popular belief and become the “hamster on the wheel” doing endless hours of boring cardio, I’d like you to consider some recent scientific research that indicates that steady pace endurance cardio work may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

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I have recently just joined one of the big gym chains, here in the UK.

One of the things that I am surprised about is the number of people who still go and do their cardio training and then go and lift weights, when it should really be weights before cardio.

I’ve talked about this before but it is worth reiterating.

You really are better off doing your weight training first as by definition lifting weights is a high intensity task and doing cardio is a low intensity task.

By doing your cardio first you are using up the valuable and limited sugar supplies that the body needs to lift weights.  You can do cardio on either sugar or fat but only sugar can be used for the weight training element.

Also it takes 15-25 minutes (depending on fitness level, the fitter the quicker) to move fat from where it’s stored to the muscles where it can be burnt up.  So by warming up and lifting weights first you are releasing the fat and then have it available to start burning as soon as you start your cardio training.

Until next time, train hard, train smart, make every rep count.

Alex

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Let’s face it most of us are under some type time pressure these days. For this reason people are constantly trying to come up with the fastest and most reliable ways to burn fat.

The old adage that we all want to look better naked is exploding as celebrity culture hits even bigger heights – who else wants to do a Paris Hilton ‘home’ movie??

Seriously if you want to find ways to burn fat really quickly then the best bet is to be doing a mix of weight training and interval training.

Here’s a sample workout program you can do if you have a lack of time.

Warm Up 5 mins

A1 Squats
A2 Chest Press
A3 Seated Row

Complete 10 reps of each exercise one after the other with no to little rest and continue for 15 mins.

So in the end you may well have done 10 rounds of the three exercises (completeing 10 reps each time) which would add up to a jaw dropping 300 reps – not bad for a quick 15 minute workout.

Finish with an interval cardio session like this.

Hill Sprint on Treadmill
30 secs on at 14.5 km/h up 7.5 incline
60 seconds rest
X 10

Cool down 5 mins.

Start to finish you can be done in less than 45 minutes and really given your body a boost so that you continue to burn fat for hours and hours after you have finished.

Give it a go.

Let me know your results in the comments section below.

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Continuing on the theme of reporting my training (due to so many requests) here’s the weight training program and cardio session I did today:

AM: Weight Training

A1 Forward Lunge over hurdle with bar loaded in front squat position (3 x8LR)
A2 Seated Mid Row – neutral grip (1×10, 2×8)
A3 Incline Chest Press – db’s (1×10, 2×6)

B1 Step Ups with arms in over head position-locked out (3 x 6LR)
B2 Low Cable Row (3x 8 LR)
B3 Single Leg Cable Hamstring Curls (3×10LR)

C1 Prone Rear Delts (2×8)
C2 Glute Hamstroc Raise (2×8)
C3 Bent Leg Calf Raises (2×8 – eccentric tempo)

PM: Cardio session

25 minute interval run on the road.

So that was today, two sessions planned again tomorrow.

Look out for my video on Kettlebell swings, I’ll be putting it up later.

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I’m asked by a lot of people exactly what I do in my weight training sessions, so in the interests of full disclosure I’m prepared to post my workouts that I do from time to time.
So today was.

A1 Kettlebell Swings (4×10)
A2 Bench Press (1x 10, 2x 4, 1x 3 eccentrics)
A3 Lat Pulldown –wide overhand (1x 10, 2x 6, 1x 4

B1 Cleans from blocks (1×10, 2x 4)
B2 Bent over Row – from dead (1x 10, 2x 6)
B3 Mixed Core – rotation and rotation control (some video clips of these to follow another day)

C1 Cable Biceps Curl – rope (2x 10)
C2 Cable Triceps Press down – rope (2x 10)
C3 Single Leg Eccentric Calf Work (2x 10 eccentrics)

On another day I’ll explain exactly what some of these weight training exercises are and how I use different resistance training techniques for different parts of my body, depending on if I’m weak point weak training or general conditioning training.

I got through this session in 35 minutes (that’s all the time I had).

Until next time, train hard, train smart, make every rep count.

P.S. If you would like someone to walk you through the process of fat loss and training that you can do from the comfort of you own home then you should look no further than Craig Ballantynes Turbulence Training. He is having a special new launch with 10 new ebooks to help you get where you’ve always wanted to be.

It ends today so don’t hang around or else you’ll miss out.

Just **click here ** to see what he’s offering.

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