Life unfolds around us all the time. We never quite know what tomorrow will bring, despite our best efforts to make plans for our week and month. Truth is, things happen that cause us to derail from our path and we have to have emergency plans to compensate for this.

So if work keeps us busy until 10 o’clock at night, 5 days a week, or we work two jobs, or we are called to duty in Iraq and we’re just trying to survive, it doesn’t mean that our workout plans and goals have to go down the drain!

First off, desire is everything. If you want something badly enough, nothing that happens can deter you from your goal and path. You may have to go to Plan B, and get creative in the way you stay focused on your goals, but Plan B can get you there just as easily as Plan A, it just involves a few more detours.

Eating Under Less Than Ideal Conditions – A Few Scenarios

You’re at the Office 10-12 Hours a Day

- Being captive at work can make eating like a champ, challenging. Getting in the habit of packing food for the day in a cooler, for all the meals you’ll need over 10 hours, is a great way to plan ahead. You may not have control over your schedule, but you sure have control over how you choose to make up for that in planning.

You’re on Vacation

- Going on holiday isn’t an excuse for a diet free-for-all and pig out session! Yeah, sure, the guys in the Bahamas on that fishing boat don’t care about your spare tire, but you will when you get home. Eating on vacation, particularly at resorts, is sooooo easy, it’s a crime to not do it. Typically, you’ll have the best seafood, beef, fruit, and vegetables available to you. You don’t have to be on a contest diet, but keep it clean and you’ll just get better on vacation.

You’re in a Third World Country

- Just because you were drafted to Iraq doesn’t mean you can’t get a workout in. Military outposts usually always have weights available for soldiers, and some other form of fitness to keep the recruits in tip top shape. But chow time can be challenging. Try to go for as much protein as you can, avoid the sugars and eat as much fruit and vegetable items as possible to keep roughage and water content high. Both are important in hot climes.

Tips for Training Under Less Than Ideal Conditions:

• Plan ahead – know what your liabilities will be and figure out a way around them
• If on vacation, go to the resort weight room and run in the sand, or ski
• If you’re on the job 60+ hours a week, run on a treadmill for 20 minutes and train for
• 20-25 minutes. The stress release is great and you’ll stay in shape
• Carry your own make-shift equipment. Rubber tubing or elastic for resistance, ankle weights, yoga/ sit up mat, etc… so you have a means by which to work out anywhere
• Have a workout buddy at work or meet your spouse or partner for a workout mid-day
• Be happy with less during the week or during the time you’re not in an ideal setting, and make up for it on the weekends or when you’re back to a normal schedule.
• Stuck without a weight room? Do wall sits, crunches, push ups, vertical jumps & steps

Remember, activities such as playing basketball count as exercise and can be a great mental break from the gym.

Today you are going to torture your muscles in a new way. The goal is to facilitate new muscle growth. We all know that muscle growth doesn’t come from doing what you already know how to do. New muscle growth arrives after you have tortured your muscles beyond belief in NEW ways. Let’s examine a new way of forcing your muscles to complete failure which is known as “Running the Rack”.

The process is simple, and just like it sounds. You are going to run down that rack, completing set after set of one particular exercise with little to no rest between sets. The result will be an increase in torn and stimulated muscle fibers well beyond what you are typically capable of achieving with standard training in which you halt at the end of 10 reps. Instead, you’ll halt after 10 reps, spend a second replacing the dumbbells and grabbing a new set, and then 8 more, then 7 more, then 6 more, then 5 more… Well, you get the point. You’ll knock out 50 repetitions and your arms, shoulders, or other muscle group will be stimulated beyond belief. Let’s examine a few tenets of using this policy which are essential for successful completion and subsequent new muscle growth.

You have to use the dumbbell rack. So choose an exercise which is dependent upon dumbbells. These are typically shoulder or biceps/triceps exercises, but becoming creative can mean you’re hitting back, chest, legs, or just about any other group you’d like. You “can” use barbells, but unless your gym has one of those nifty pre-sized racks of barbells ranging from 10 to 100 pounds, you may have a lot of collaring to do!

The gym has to be empty. It can be very rude to try to use this kind of training with a packed dumbbell area. If it’s that important to you, then you can return to the gym at 10 pm. Don’t try running the rack at 5:30 pm, or you may find yourself running for your life!

You have to be caffeinated. Well, caffeine isn’t needed. But you do need to be energetic. You need to be able to push yourself well past standard training sets. Find a way to find the energy you need!

Distractions must be removed. Leave your iPhone in the car, and don’t carry around a chart to fill out. It’s just you and the weights. Throw down with reckless abandon and leave it all on the gym floor. You got this!

Follow up is essential. You just tore up a new level of muscle fibers, the likes of which you probably cannot imagine. You will need plenty of protein, calories, water and rest in order to optimize this tough training and deliver new muscle as a result. Give it your all, and run that rack!

As the physiques presented onstage become more and more advanced thanks to sports technology and the growth of the sport, it becomes more and more important to isolate and address each flaw on the physique. For many, imbalanced arms are a source of flaws. Most new bodybuilders tend to choose 2-3 biceps exercises, and 2-3 triceps exercises, and complete them weekly with much success. However, as the months and year pass, and the physique develops further, certain areas that are less developed tend to emerge as weaknesses. It’s important to change exercises used to isolate

The triceps are actually 3 separate muscles, divided into upper and lower regions. They make up the bulk of the upper arm, much more so than the biceps do. Complete triceps development is required to succeed in bodybuilding, and isolating the areas of the muscle group is sometimes required to do this.

Overall triceps development
Weighted dips are terrific for slow, heavy triceps gains. Dips between two benches are also very effective. The limited range of motion and continuous tension is very conductive to growth. Close-grip barbell presses are perhaps the most superior movement for building triceps mass. Use them extensively in the first few years of training to ensure a strong triceps mass foundation.

Upper triceps
Cable press downs, in all their variations, are very popular in gyms. For this reason, many bodybuilders have superior upper triceps and weak lower triceps. If you have lagging upper triceps, add more cable press down movements to your routine.
Dumbbell kickbacks, often forgotten, also isolate the upper triceps.

Lower triceps
Often the weak area in many physiques due to training or genetics, the lower triceps often need isolation movements when they lag in development. Weighted dips should be utilized for this hard-to-hit region of the triceps head. Work to flex the lower triceps region at the bottom of the movement, and use long, slow repetitions in varying rep ranges to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible.

Typically, the mass exercises are used for the first several years of training. As time passes and weaknesses become more apparent, training protocols are adjusted to ensure complete development. If your triceps lack mass, use more close-grip presses and dips. If the upper triceps lag, mix in more cable press downs. If the lower triceps are a weak area, use more weighted dips. Keep an eye out to see which exercises are most effective with your body type and training style, and choose which exercises work best for you!

When you present the word “bodybuilder” to the average American, he or she is going to come up with one of three immediate and predictable reactionary words. The first will be “Arnold!”, indicating their knowledge of the sport of building new muscle mass and strength is limited to what Hollywood told them. The second might be ‘drugs’, in which case they have been trained by an ignorant and biased media to associate anyone with biceps measuring greater than 12 inches to have been injecting testosterone into their backside twice a day. And the third may be some classic stereotype of the lunkhead, meat head obnoxious bodybuilder. Let’s look at the good, the bad, and the ugly perceptions of those who lift iron, and how these stereotypes can be better managed.

The Good
The ideal bodybuilder is one that lifts and enjoys it as a way to improve his or her own life – and that’s it. They don’t preach to others, but they’re happy to help. They look and feel healthy. They aren’t covered in acne, they aren’t bloated, and they aren’t forcing their lifestyles upon anyone else. This is the categories in which most lifters fall. In fact, with some smaller framed lifters, you don’t even know they practice well balanced bodybuilding training until you see them sans shirt. They keep their lifting on the down-low!

The Bad
You’ve seen these guys, and there’s a good chance you’ve been this guy before. They want to talk about bodybuilding 24/7. They carry protein shakers to the bathroom with them in case their anabolic window happens to try to close while they’re urinating. They have FLEX mags everywhere, and they’re always on the forums. They leave written diets in the company lunchroom next to the cooler they use to bring their 4 meals for an 8-hour shift. They’re obnoxious, but not overbearing.

The Ugly
Worst. Bodybuilder. Ever. They use the word “bro” in every sentence. They wear TWO bandanas. Their vintage 1980’s Zubaz shorts and Optimix shoes were actually purchased in the 1980s. And they love spandex. They spend 3 hours in the gym talking, and 27 minutes training. They carry more Tupperware than a Wal-Mart SuperCenter. And we won’t even talk about their bodily emissions…

It’s okay to work out and it’s okay to talk about it. But there’s no need to shove it in the face of others. You should never “suggest” to someone that they need to work out – there’s a good chance they already know it! Be there for friendly advice if they ask, but beyond there, just live your life and be the best “you” that you can be.

There are many well-proven and time-tested weight lifting exercises to build up Glute muscles. Gluteals or Glutes are the important muscles covering the butt. Many of the weight lifting exercises like lunges, quats and leg presses are all contributing immensely to the muscle development of Glutes. There are some weight lifting exercises, which are targeted directly to the development of Glute muscles. Deadlifts are such weight lifting exercises with isolated benefits for the glutes.

Deadlift: This weight lifting exercise is to be done in a standing position. You can hold the barbell at the arms length. You can hold it with narrower grip or shoulder width or in a wider grip. Now start lowering the bar up to the floor by bending the waist and knees and slowly return back to the original position. While doing this weight lifting exercise keep the back straight with slight inward arch. You have to keep the barbell as close as possible to your body. Bending and straightening the hips and waist simultaneous will be beneficial in gaining good effects from this weight lifting exercise. This is the number one weight lifting exercise for the glutes.

Straight leg deadlift: This is a weight lifting exercise to be carried out the same way as deadlifts as explained above. The difference in this weight lifting exercise is that you have to keep the legs and knees straight. You should not bend the knees while touching the floor. This straight leg deadlift are good for thigh muscles and back muscles as well.

You can repeat the deadlift weight lifting exercise many times in an exercise session to gain more glutes muscles growth. The reps depend purely on your objectives of muscle growth and the physical conditions. If you do the deadlift weight lifting exercise perfectly and regularly, you can be assured of getting excellent Glutes.

Everyone knows the best way to build a huge, thick & strong back: Lots of heavy sets with barbell and dumbbell free weight work. You use exercises like deadlift, barbell row, dumbbell row, and bent-over barbell rowing, and you get thick quick. The workouts are never enjoyable, and training in this manner does take its toll on your joints and central nervous system. But you will attain some serious muscle mass training in this style while enjoying adequate protein & carbohydrate consumption, along with plenty of rest.

There are going to be times when all-out free weight training just isn’t the way to go. Your joints might be inflamed from heavy workout sessions. Perhaps you just competed in a bodybuilding show and you’re way down in body weight. Maybe you had the flu, and you’re coming back from being 12 pounds down. Life throw all sorts of curveballs at us – and it’s our responsibility to adjust to it by changing up our gym workouts to accommodate these changes while still making good gains.

Start your free weight-free back day with any of the variety of Hammer Strength machines. You can use the overhead or front pulldowns. You’ll be moving 45 pound plates, but the machine will be controlling the balance and arc of the movement. Knock out 4 sets of one movement, then 4 sets of another movement, for a total of 8 sets on these exercises.

Next it’s cable work. Use the lat pulldown bar with 2 different attachments (4 sets each) for a total of 8 sets. The wide grip for the first, then the close-grip parallel grip bar for the second group of sets, will allow for a wide variety of stimulation to your back muscles, without the use of free weights!

Finally you will move on to the hyper-extension machine. This will stimulate the muscles of your lower back without giving them the raw pain and torture they enjoy (?) from the use of barbell deadlifts. Four sets is all you need of this movement.

There you have it – a solid way to stimulate the muscles of the back without resorting to the much more effective free weights. You’ll want to stick to moving the heavy iron as much as possible. But for times in your life when your muscles or nervous system just cannot handle an all-out workout, a back day without free weights is the way to go!

There’s always a learning curve when it comes to overall pectoral development. There’s always that starting point, at which every eventual bodybuilder begins. You know they point – they enter the gym, they use the bench press and biceps curls, and then they leave. We’ve all been there, most likely. Given the advantages that the internet offers in terms of knowledge, we can often make that learning curve shorter and move on to overall proper physique development without too much delay. At that point, we begin to realize that the chest isn’t solely developed by using only the bench press. You CAN do it that way. You’ll develop a thick, bunched up chest with zero upper chest flair. It will sag and really won’t look all that good. However, if you wish to do things correctly, and attack the chest from all four angles, you might just develop a set of pectorals you can be proud of. Read on!

Upper Chest
This is the ‘shelf’ which gives the bodybuilder a thickness that is evident even in a loose t-shirt. Plenty of incline work is the key to building up this area. This includes bench press and dumbbell bench press. You can us varying angles from 30 degree up to 70 degrees. Anything 80 or above will target the shoulders much more than the upper pectorals. You should always begin your chest workout by targeting the upper pecs to hit them when you are at your strongest.

Middle Chest
You already know how to hit this area. You’ve probably known since your very first foray into the gym! Flat bench press and dumbbell press are the way to go. Include 4 to 8 sets per workout of this chest area to ensure you really build up the meat of the pectoral area.

Lower Chest
Four sets of decline pressing (bench press or dumbbell press), completed 2 to 4 times per month, should provide you with adequate chest development and really ensure your chest breaks apart from your upper abdominals. Without that line, you are really limiting overall development.

Outer Chest
Standing cable flyes as well as incline and flat dumbbell flyes will fully target the chest to shoulder tie-ins. Neglecting this area leaves you witohut that sweeping front chest look, and puts you at a greater risk for rotator cuff injuries.

Keep in mind that if you are a bodybuilder, there are a few more approaches to successful overall chest development that you should not neglect. Stretch for 5 to 10 minutes after every workout. Flex your pectorals between every set to push as much blood into the muscle groups as possible. Above all, stay consistent with diet, rest, and full body training, and you’ll have a completely developed set of pectorals in no time!

Everything is relative in life. When you’re a child, 30 seems like a pretty old age. When you’re 30, it’s not so bad, but 50 seems ancient. When you reach 50 years old, you’re looking at those in their 60s and 70s and celebrating your own youth.

Just as we all have different paths in life, we do have some similarities when it comes to bodybuilding, fitness & health goals that seem to change with each decade. Let’s examine the differences to consider when moving through the decades on the path of life.

In your teens…
This is when most people discover weight lifting. You are tired of being a 110 pound skinny twerp, and you hit the weights. Or, you want to excel at sports, so you discover the iron. Whatever drives you, this is when many of us develop that lifelong love with the iron. The goal at this point is to gain muscle mass at any cost. Eating junk while staying lean is a nice blessing of this age!

In your twenties…
This is the age where we complete our education and often find a mate. Looking good and being strong is a huge part of this equation. Strength, stamina, and appearance are all important factors in gaining the best employment and finding the most attractive mate. Lift heavy, eat clean, and enjoy yourself in your twenties!

In your thirties…
At this point, you’re starting a family. You enjoy your muscle as well as the muscle maturity that is arriving in your 30s, but you also start to realize that health plays more of a factor than you would like to realize. It’s time to cut back on the sugars and fats, even if your body looks great when you consume them. Less red meat, more chicken, and you’ll have a great decade.

In your forties…
Preventative care starts to kick in during your 40s. It’s time to start seeing a doctor to prevent problems before they arise. It’s time to get blood panels done. More cardio and less of that outright crazy heavy weight. One rep maximum lifts should be coming to a close at this age if you want your joints and tendons to remain health for the coming decades.

In your fifties and beyond…
Your testosterone levels are starting to drop at this page. You’re getting a bit smaller and weaker by the year despite your best efforts. You can still look good, certainly, but training to live longer and feel better will now overtake training to have the best body on the beach. See your doctor regularly, keep the cardio moderate and steady and discover machines more than free weights.

The next time you walk through the gym, take a look at the plates sitting on the bars of the many people training. Notice something? They’re all big plates. 45′s. 25′s. Maybe a few 10′s sprinkled in. Think about that for a moment. That means that every time these lifters want to add more weight to a movement (increased strength requires increased muscle!) they have to make a jump in weight on that movement by TWENTY POUNDS! When is the last time you EVER added twenty pounds to any exercise when in the gym? It’s rare.

People train like this for years and never notice the cycle in which they are trapped. They might eke out an extra rep now and then, but for the most part, they stay at the same weights for exercises. Their muscles, lacking any motivation to grow (the added stress that an increased payload would require) are not forced to grow. They look the same. They do not improve.

The solution to this problem is easy. Since we can’t make improvements using an extra twenty pounds on the bar, why not shoot lower, and attempt to make these same improvements over a GRADUAL time period? The one-pound plate is your secret weapon for this process. When you train chest this week, add a one-pound weight to each side of the bar before using your normal weights. This will only be an extra two pounds on the bar, and it’s likely you’ll never notice it (While an extra twenty pounds on the bar would likely crush you). It’s very likely that you’ll be able to complete your normal number of repetitions, as the variance in weight is very small and your muscles are capable at working just a tad outside their zone of proximal development.

During your rest days, your chest will grow. You might now see it or feel it, but you have challenged your chest to use a new level of weights, even if it wasn’t that appealing to the ego. The next time you enter the gym, you WILL have a very small amount of new muscle, even if measure in millimeters. And what do you do next week on chest day? That’s right. You add TWO one-pound plates to each side of the bar. And you do it all over again. You’ll easily move the extra minor four pounds – as it’s very close to what you’ve been lifting, and you do have some extra muscle on you.

Repeat this process for every exercise, every workout, every week. Add 1-2 pounds to movements. If you’re using machines, hang a 1-pound weight (safely!) on the pin attachment. You’ll soon discover that your muscle are growing again, due to the gradual increased resistance. Good luck, and remember, the one-pound plate is the bodybuilder’s best friend!

Sets and reps.. They are the mainstay of all workouts. After all, without their measure, no workout would have meaning and no body could be built. But are sets and reps more about creatively expressing a kind of bodybuilding license or personal philosophy, or are they truly scientific tools by which we build precise body parts of a certain size and shape?

Art and science can converge, particularly in this case. That’s because sets and reps and the results they bring in particular and specific combinations, deliver very definite things based on mathematics. The mathematics of training include sets and reps, training angles, and things such as time vs. intensity, etc.. The art of training includes how you utilize and direct those mathematics to create a result.

Training is a lot like the practice of medicine – both have elements of the scientific and the artistic. Most people think medicine is strictly a scientific, quantifiable kind of practice, and that doctors are the ultimate scientists. But more than that, doctors are the ultimate artists. The best of them create a pagination of scientific prescriptions and directions that create a result that can be pure magic. So too are bodybuilders – the successful ones – part scientist and part artist. This description of being “scientific” doesn’t include chemical supplementation either.

Training is a science, no doubt, but training is also largely an art. Not everyone can create a work of art and not everyone can create a training routine that is meaningful to the canvas they happen to be working with. Since your body is a canvas, of sorts, it’s important to understand how to lend dimension and image to that canvas.

Look, anyone can put together a routine of some kind. And, to some degree, putting a routine together will garner some result or another. But will it end up being considered a total picture of creative artistry? Not often. We laugh when we hear someone say, “If I took as many ‘roids as that guy, I’d be Mr. Olympia too!” The reason we laugh is that that person seems to have no clue as to the artistry necessary to create and direct a series of routines to net a series of results, in a very methodical fashion, over time. It takes incredible vision to see that this workout on this day, along with the workouts planned on subsequent days, all have a reason for being the way that they are and will culminate in a total picture of power and aesthetics.

So here’s the science of a workout, using sets and reps:

Since there is a minimal amount of time in which a muscle can be stimulated in order to achieve maximum strength and size gains, using a particular set of principles is necessary. Here is an example of what each rep range will proffer:

REP RANGES FOR STRENGTH AND SIZE

• 1 to 5 reps = Maximum strength increases; enhanced neural drive
• 6 to 8 reps = Good compromise between maximum strength gains and hypertrophy gains (IDEAL RANGE FOR BODYBUILDERS)
• 9 to 12 reps = Maximum hypertophy gains and an increase in strength (STILL IDEAL RANGE FOR BODYBUILDERS)
• 13 to 20 reps = Strength and endurance gains – less hypertrophy.

Gains in strength are best had in the lower rep ranges – which is what powerlifters use – and the best muscle size gains are to be had in the mid ranges.

DETERMINATION OF SET NUMBER AND TYPE

Number of sets chosen
The overall number of both sets and reps should be based on how rapidly you will overtrain. The more sets you perform, you’ll naturally run the risk of overtraining. See the categories below to determine, overall, how much is enough and how much is too much.

Number of exercises per body part
The longer the list of exercises you wish to perform for a body part, the less sets you’ll be doing overall. So if you are doing legs and you choose to do squats, leg press, hack squats, leg extensions and lunges, you should do about 4 sets for the compound movements and 2 sets for the others, such as lunges and extensions, so you don’t overtrain.

Muscle size
If you are already have a lot of mass, the number of sets you perform will be proportionate to your current size and what else you want to accomplish. You will be doing more sets for the larger muscle groups and less for the smaller, but still more than a beginner.

Training Level
Beginners will require less overall sets and this should be taken into consideration. If you are more seasoned, you may be able to handle 4 sets of each exercise and 3-4 exercises per body part.

Composition of Muscle (Genetics)
More red or white fiber? Fast twitch or slow twitch? This is something you’ll only have a clue about by your performance with endurance and strength activities. If you are explosive but have little endurance, you’ve probably got a lot of fast twitch fiber. You’ll need to cater workouts to these determinations.

Putting it All Together

So here’s how it goes…
Ask yourself the questions associated in the sets section, and determine what your goals are in the rep section, and put together exercises that you know you want to do, with sets and reps assigned to each exercise. But it doesn’t stop there. You see, each workout is even more individual than this. Not only are the above considerations of hypertrophy vs. strength and issues of overtraining, fiber type and set and rep number, important, it’s also important to understand schedule, rest, how you eat, and a host of other factors that cannot be accounted for by anyone but you. That’s why workouts are so individual – and a total creation, using the science of facts.

Here are some other factors to consider and ask yourself before constructing a routine:

• When do you train? (AM or PM)

• Do you work a full day before training?

• Are you overweight?

• Do you get a full 8 hours sleep (minimum) per night?

• Are you getting your caloric needs met?

• Do you eat clean or anything you want?

• Do you have stress in your life?

Can you now see why a workout is such a creative process? How sets and reps are not the only consideration, but certainly provide a great roadmap for results?

Sets and reps are the undeniable parameters we cannot live without. However, sets and reps are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of taking science and creating something original and unique to you and your set of circumstances and criteria. Plug in the other variables of your life, and you’ll find that sets and reps transcend mere science and become… art.