Exercise

How to get the perfect ass - The evolution approach

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Published on Wednesday, 09 November 2011 19:53

I am constantly asked how to get the perfect ass... the questions normally go like:

  • How do I get the perfect ass?
  • How do I put more junk in the trunk?
  • How do I make it so when i back that thang up, everyone knows I'm backing up?
You'll find many exercises and approaches to this on the inter-web and I'll cover none of them here. The purpose of this entry is to share something I came across while watching a BBC documentary called BBC Origins of us. 
 
It seems the fact that humans have a muscular ass is something of an anomaly in the animal kingdom and something we evolved over thousands of years. Now as those of you who believe in ridiculous notions such as evolution will know, we would not favor anything in evolution that wasn't beneficial so the question was... whats so great about the junk in our trunk.
 
Turns out that the gluteus maximus (butt muscle) is barely used by our day to day activities. Even while walking, it's barely utilized. This is probably what explains why so many people have flat to no asses unless they are all fat! So what causes our butt to beef up? It seems that the butt is heavily utilized in running. As a recent article in the New York Times suggested, the natural way to run is to run using your glutes, thighs and hamstring. The approach for using your glutes and hamstrings makes sense because those are the bigger muscles in your body than the calf. The article further suggests that you should let your lower leg hang loose and land with your ankle inline with or behind your knee, never in front of your knee. This is the way man was meant to run.
 
The BBC documentary actually attaches electrodes to the presenters butt to see how the muscles react when the woman ran and it shows that the only time the butt is really utilized is when you run. So there you have it, the muscular butt evolved to allow man to run and most importantly, we evolved as distance runners (this explain why we are hairless and sweat).
 
As you have no doubt gathered, the flawless evolutionary approach to the perfect butt is... running... 

Lift fast, tempo is so yesterday.

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Published on Monday, 24 October 2011 21:51

There is a common misconception that you have to lift weights in a slow and controlled manner. While control is something you should always have, lifting weights slowly should not be the rule but rather than exception. Don't get me wrong, tempo lifting has it's place in your workout; almost everything has it's place however when it comes to building muscle and strength, it's been a long standing practice among professional to advise their client to life as fast as possible.

I have people in the gym correct me and tell me that I should lift weights slowly. This recent article on AskMen.com on how to gain muscle fast brought back some advice I had read in Starting Strength (2nd edition) Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore. The book basically stated that if you want to gain strength or power (there is a difference in definition at least in the body building world) you not only have to lift heavy but you have to lift fast.

The purpose of this posting is to hopefully debunk the myth that you have to lift slowly.

An other myth I might as well bust while I am at it is that lifting light weights with many reps will make you "cut" or give you "better definition". Again, lifting light weights for many reps will produce the same results as lifting heavy weights with fewer reps. However with light weights you are less likely to stress your muscles properly (without proper guidance) and thus are less likely to gain benefit from the exercise. Light weight high-reps and heavy weight low-reps have been shown to have the same physiological response so if light weights and high reps will not make you "cut" or "lean" and heavy weights will not make you bulky. Other factors that determine your physique are important as well, the most important of which is the genetic factor, diet, cardio and stretching. 

For a good analysis on high-reps or low-reps watch the video on this link.

Upper body workout without any equipment

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Published on Wednesday, 05 October 2011 20:18

If you travel a lot or generally don't like to get out of the house. It's nice to have a workout routine that you can do almost anywhere. Here is a great upper body workout I found on the Muscle & Fitness website called the Upper Body Bear Crawl Blast. It's a complete upper body workout for which you just been about 20 yards of space.