Exercises Archives

Do You Do The Cable Pull Through?

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The Cable Pull Through is an excellent exercise
that works your entire posterior chain!

So what does that mean in English?? Your posterior chain is your muscle “chain” on your back side spanning from your lower back all the way down your legs including your glutes and hamstrings (the primary muscles of the posterior chain).

I learned about this exercise at Cressey Performance while dealing with some serious lower back pain that prevented me from deadlifting.

I must admit I quickly got over how ridiculous I felt when performing the pull through exercise when I experienced the benefits of it! You really need to check your ego at the door when performing this one in the gym! Trust me, you’ll get some very odd looks!!

Check out this exclusive New England Muscle video with a fun twist on it!

 

 

Can pushups build muscle?

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The answer to the question 
“Can pushups build muscle” is……

Sorry, I’m gonna keep you hanging for just a minute! The answer isn’t so straight forward. First I need to briefly discuss what is required to build lean muscle.

There are a few fundamental principles that must be satisfied
to build muscle:

  1. The load (resistance) you are trying to move must be great enough (in this case, your body)
  2. The human body will adapt to this load so you must apply progressive resistance
  3. You can’t grow muscle out of thin air so you also need to eat right!

Let’s take a deeper dive into the concept of
Progressive insurance Resistance

Let me ask you a question:

Do you think you could build noticible muscle by simply pushing your hands back and forth in the air?

Hopefully you answered no, other wise, you may want to check out
this site. Ok, just kidding!

…but seriously, the point I’m trying to illustrate is that you need to provide enough resistance for your muscle to grow.

So how much resistance??

A general rule of thumb is that anything over 20 reps will not build a significant amount of muscle (there are many exceptions to this but that’s a topic for another post).

This would imply that banging out 30 pushups to build muscle and shooting for more than 30 pushups the next time you try won’t give you much lean muscle growth. It will give you muscle endurance.

The muscle fibers that really like to grow are to ones that move heavy loads OR move ”moderate” loads faster. Both equal force applied to your muscle. Force is good.

So my recomendation to build lean muscle on your chest, shoulders and arms using pushups is to add enough resistance to keep your sets in the 8-15 rep range. If you are fairly new to exercise, lean towards the higher end of the rep range.

There are many options available to add resistance such as:

  • Elevate your feet
  • Push up from suspension straps
  • Weighted vests
  • Bands
  • and my favorite:

  Tractor chains!!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Just how many reps to build muscle?

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Have you ever wondered how many reps
is best to build muscle?

This is a very common question with a lot of confusion! The trainers and strength coaches that know what they are doing always have a specific reason for the number of repetitions they prescribe for a given exercise.

After reading this post, YOU will understand the benefits of all the different rep ranges and answer the question of just how many reps are needed to build muscle.

Before I get into the number of reps,  let me take a brief moment to explain what parts of a muscle can grow (i.e. get bigger, more numerous and/or thicker):

What muscle parts get thicker, more numerous and/or bigger?

  • Muscle fibers, called myofibrils
  • Protein filaments called actin and myosin (they move the muscle fibers)
  • Sarcoplasm (not the slime from Ghost Busters!) is the gelatenous energy stores of carbohydrates (glycogen) and fat, enzymes, etc.
  • Connective tissue

Ok, so after looking at that list you can see that there are 4 general things that “build a muscle”.

There’s No Such Thing As A Bad Rep Range!
Many rep ranges can build muscle….
It just depends on your goals!

Now I will discuss the rep ranges from a single rep all the way up to 20 reps and the benefits of each range.

Low rep ranges (1 – 5 reps)

This rep range puts your muscle under the greatest amount of tension (although moving a moderate weight faster could achieve the same tension but that’s a different post!) since you are moving the heaviest weight.

This rep range increases the number of muscle fibers called myofibrils.The more of these you have, the more force you can produce and the stronger you are! This rep range is ideal for strength gains although some individuals will build massive muscle size as well using this range if they have a higher percentage of fast twitch muscle fibers.

High rep ranges (11 – 20 reps)

This type of training increases the muscle energy stores that I generally called sarcoplasm in the above list box. This type of muscle growth is called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. I call it the all show and no go muscle! Perhaps that’s a bit extreme… and If you are a body builder, you should spend some time in this rep range.

If you are an athlete then this range has a more limited value (although still very useful!). It does increase muscular endurance and has some fat burning benefits.

On a side note, the one mistake I see far too often is people switching exclusively to high rep training when trying to “get ripped”. This will not force your muscle to stay strong and you stand to lose more lean mass while dieting with this approach.

Medium rep ranges (6 – 10 reps)

As you might have guessed, this rep range is an optimal compromise between the low and high rep ranges and you will build muscle endurance and strength..

This is where most people spend their time but more in the 8 – 12 rep range. Over the long term that is certainly not optimal.

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