Time for some sweet hammies

If you ask me, really well developed hamstrings are a benchmark of a great athlete. If I see someone with great hamstrings, I begin to assume a bunch of things:

1.      They know what they’re doing

2.      They are a great athlete.

3.      They look awesome

4.      They’re very fit.

Might just be me, but because so few people have good hamstring development, I use it as one of my indicators of fitness and exercise knowledge. The reason most people lack hamstrings is because they never get them anywhere near their shortest position. I watch people on a daily basis yank their

butts in the air, not knowingly actually taking the hamstring out of the movement as they do so!

The minute your butt goes in the air at all, less tension is placed on the hamstring. In order for maximum tension and maximum shortening, the hip must be extended; i.e., your butt needs to stay locked down.

Next time you do a lying leg curl, try to do it with NO/MINIMAL butt movement. It will probably feel impossible at first. This can be a tough one to get into because a large portion of the population lacks flexibility so this might be a bit tough at first. Give it a try though; the contraction will blow your mind.

Execution:

Lift your chest off the pad as much as is comfortable while leaving your hips pressed against the pad. The goal is to try to align your shoulders, hips and knees in a straight line (or knees slightly extended behind your hips). Maintain this position without extraneous movement throughout the entire set. This, in fact, shortens the hamstring muscles from BOTH ends, thereby getting it maximally shortened. The feeling and contraction is unreal!

In fact, if you want to feel it for yourself right now, stand up, and hold onto something for balance. Keeping your chest up and without leaning forward at all, I want you to simply extend one of your legs behind you until you feel your glute contract. Got it?

 Now, curl your leg (bring your heel up toward your bum). Do not change anything else. It’s important that that knee stay behind your hip and your glute stays contracted. (If you have a hard time contracting your glute in that position, your hip flexors are way too tight and this is too advanced for you right now.) If you got that right, regardless of your current fitness level, you are going to be saying “Wow! I’ve never felt a contraction like that in my hamstrings before.” The crazy part is, it may also appear to be a rather short Range of Motion, right?

“WICKED STUFF, BPak!”

Gaining FAT Faster Than You Gain MUSCLE!?

I’m not going to sit here and assume you all don’t already know how important  Nutrition is to optimizing growth. I KNOW you do. People come to me all the time and ask “What is the BEST approach to take if I want to gain muscle and lose fat?” Is that even possible?

Well, the truth of the matter is that, yes, it is absolutely possible. Is it easy? Of course not. BUT it is SIMPLE.

Let me do my best to explain.

Your first consideration when it comes to nutrition is RECOVERY. You need to always ensure that your body has what it needs to recover when it needs it. It is very important to nourish your muscles around the workout. Your muscles need protein, in the form of amino acids, present in the bloodstream ALL the time or the body will start to leach those aminos from other parts of your body (Read: break down your muscles). This is BAD NEWS for those of us trying to build muscle.

REMEMBER: Weight training is a catabolic process -- it breaks down muscle! It’s when we leave the gym and feed the body that the growth and re-growth processes occur. Whenever possible we want to minimize the amount of muscle breakdown during the workout. In order to do this, certain essential nutrients MUST be present:

·        branch chain aminos

·        glutamine

·        arginine

·        antioxidants

·        glucose

·        zinc

This is your first consideration when it comes to building muscle. The other main considerations of an intelligent nutrition plan are timing of nutrients, and ratio of nutrients (percentage of fats/carbs/proteins).

How do I know WHEN to EAT WHAT?

I think by this point in my life I have probably read EVERY nutrition book ever written (or at least started to read them all. Some are terrible so I toss them out halfway through). I have probably tried every single logical approach to nutrition at some point in my life.

I was once a vegetarian; I have tried really high carb, low protein; I have tried high protein, low carb; zero carb; zero fat; gluten free; Ketogenic diet; Metabolic diet; Hollywood diet; Fasting diet….you get the idea! The only one I think I haven’t tried yet is raw food diet because I just don’t think I could support my bodyweight with the limited food sources.

I could tell you pros and cons of each one for someone trying to build muscle and optimize their body composition (a.k.a.,Lose Fat). My approach to nutrition is very much a hybrid of them all. I believe I have taken the best points from each one and manipulated them to create a formula for people trying to build lean muscle without the excess fat.

To Doubling Your Muscle Gains :

Learning Proper Anatomical Muscle Function Basically, it boils down to learning the proper anatomical function of each of the muscles and using this to your advantage. I know it sounds like a lot of work, but don’t worry, I don’t expect anyone to learn the science. Just follow instructions, make some small changes to the way you train in the gym.

Let’s put this to use:

Want big triceps? A fully contracted (shortened) tricep can ONLY happen with your elbow extended behind you, arms slightly internally rotated (palm facing behind you), and fully extended elbow. Try it now! You can feel it contract without great effort, right?

Muscle Building Problem SOLVED

Ben Pakulski

Question: Ben, please identify the number one training mistake that would be preventing individuals from achieving maximal muscle gains.

Answer: Mistake number one is never knowing what the right amount of exhaustion is

Have you ever left the gym wondering if you could have done more?  If you should have done more? I know I have. Heck, there has even been days when I comtemplated going back in the gym because I just didn’t KNOW that my muscles were exhausted. That’s a terrible feeling.

I don’t know about you, but when I go to the gym I want to KNOW that my time is well spent and im not wasting my days and getting less results than I am after.

Here is the next cutting edge intensifier in muscle building: NOS

NOS stands for Neurological Overload Set. The set that overloads the body and creates the optimal hormonal environment for growth inside the muscle!

Hormones like testosterone, growth hormone, IGF-1 are responsible for growth. The best way to stimulate these hormones is through intense exercise that takes muscles to their limit.

NOS is the single most effective way to take a muscle to its complete physical exhaustion. As many of you already know, TIME under TENSION is the number one most highly correlated factor with muscle hypertrophy (growth). NOS start out by putting you in the exact optimal range for muscular growth via optimal Time under Tension (40-70 seconds)

8 repetitions done with a 4010 cadence (5-second reps) . For those of you unfamiliar with this cadence reference, it is very simple. It means 4 seconds DOWN(negative/eccentric portion) , 0-seconds pause, 1-second explosive concentric (contraction), and then 0-second pause.

The “0’s” tend to be most confusing for people, this simply means DON’T STOP. Use continuous motion and no rest or pause at the top or bottom of the rep.

Once you have completed 8 repetitions with 5-second reps, IMMEDIATELY decrease the weight by 20% and keep going. No cheating, no extraneous movement, just strict executed form. Repeat this 20% drop in weights 2 more times for a total of 3 decreases in weight.

 This process will take your muscle to complete physical exhaustion. The lactic acid will be uncomfortable but find comfort in knowing that more lactic acid is correlated with more growth hormone, bigger muscles and a leaner, harder physique.

The #1 Factor To Build Muscle

Ben Pakulski

Question: Ben, please identify the number one training mistake that would be preventing individuals from achieving maximal muscle gains

Answer: Well, we all know “the guy” in the gym that throws a ton of weight on the bar and moves it with terrible form and looks like his going to hurt himself. He is the root of many of our jokes, and definitely gets a lot of sideways looks from the patrons of the gym.

We’ve all asked ourselves “WHAT is he trying to do?” Chances are, he has no clue. He comes in the gym everyday and does the Exact same thing week in and week out because he really has NO IDEA what he is trying to do. Therein lies the problem! Guess what, more likely than not, you have all been guilty of doing this too at some point in your life (whether you care to admit it or not).

The first thing you need to do is identify your desired goal. If your goal is to build muscle, then you have come to the right place and you should take a minute listen up.

The one and ONLY most important factor that you need to consider when it comes to your quest to build muscle, is TENSION. (more on that in a minute..)

We have all heard people speak about mind-muscle connection, or that you’ve got to really “squeeze” a muscle to make it grow. I don’t know about you, but for most people this is a really hard concept to figure out. Those of us that “get” what it means, still really have a difficult time putting it to action.

The good news is, this is quite a simple concept and I will show you how to apply it to building your muscles literally TWICE as fast.

Here is what you need to know:

Muscles communicate in terms of tension. They have absolutely NO idea how much weight you’re lifting. They only know how much tension or torque is going through them.

What if I told you there was a way to perform more or less ANY exercise so that you could FEEL it EXACTLY where you’re supposed to feel it, AND increase muscular tension with LESS weight to get results TWICE as fast in half the time. Sounds pretty cool, right? I’ll explain.

YOU can control exactly how much tension or torque that goes through a muscle you are working at ANY point in the workout. You have complete control over HOW HARD you squeeze, HOW LONG you work, and most importantly EXACTLY WHERE you squeeze and contract.

You can selectively train EXACTLY the muscle youre supposed to be and not train anything that you don’t want to be.

Every guy out there knows what im talking about. We've all don’t bench presses and got NO pump in our chests but our delts and tris were cooked! No more, gents!

I would like to take this moment to introduce to you the revolutionary muscle building technique called INTENTION!

The way I describe intention to people I encounter that are unfamiliar with it is this:

“Intention is the CONSCIOUS INTENT to create TENSION in the muscle”

I know, I know, sounds a little hokey. BUT the fact of the matter is that this is BY FAR the best way to ensure you are maintain tension on the working muscle.

The number one most highly correlated factor with building muscle is “TIME UNDER TENSION”. The longer you can keep tension directly on a muscle, the more you control the rate at which that muscle grows.

You can do a bench press all day long, and if there is not tension in the pecs, you WILL NOT build pecs. Why is it that some people can build great chests while bench pressing while others cant? Because some peoples “genetics” all them to

thoughtlessly keep a greater amount of tension in that muscle!

We now have the ability to do this consciously. The best part is, IT'S EASY!!

 INTENTION in action.

 The most simple example of intention exists on the bench press. Grab on the bar in front of you, just like you would on a bench press. You can use any stable surface for this example. I will use the edge of my desk. I grab the edge of my desk about equally as wide as I would on a bench press. Hold on firmly, and without letting your hands move from that

position, “shove” them toward each other. What happened? Your chest contracted didn’t it?

Now imagine doing this exact thing through a range of motion, like in a bench press.

WOW! You just created continuous tension in the EXACT muscle you wanted to! Pretty cool right!?