Now if you don’t know this yet you are about to know that achieving that ripped midsection has more to do with what you stuff in your mouth than what exercises you select.  Getting lean enough to see your abs is nutrition based and you simply cannot out exercised poor eating.  Performing core work everyday for hours on end will not give you the abs your looking for if your stuffing calzones down your throat.

With that being said, today’s blog will be about choosing the best exercises for your core so that when you do shed those layers of body-fat your abs will look even that much better.  It is also about keeping your body healthy and a good core training routine should teach you how to use your abdominal while performing other tasks.

When we look at core stability and core training we want to categorize our core work into 2 categories:

1. Basic Static Stability
2. Dynamic Integrated Stabilization

Basic Static Stability

This type of  exercise is the simplest form of core training one can do.  What we mean by static stability is being able to perform an exercise while bracing your core without movement for a required amount of time or reps.  In this type of exercises you are trying to teach the body the proper way to brace the core muscles and hold them tight.

Dynamic Integrated Stabilization

This type of core training involves the static stability of the example above with additional aspects integrated into the exercise.  What we are learning to do with dynamic integrated stabilization training is keep the core braced while another area of our body is moving.  This produces a much greater demand on the core and therefore will produce a much stronger torso.

This type of exercise can be broken up into 2 sections.

1. Static Hips/Dynamic Shoulders:  this is when the core is braced and we move from the shoulder joint to produce a greater stress on the core musculature.  This can involve equipment such as the TRX suspension trainer, Val-Slides, Stability Ball, Ab wheel, etc  While our shoulders create a movement the rest of our body remains static and braced.
2. Static Shoulders/Dynamic Hips: this is when the core is braced and we move from the hip joint to produce a great load on the core musculature. This also involves such equipment as the ones mentioned above.  While our hips create movement our core and shoulder joint stabilize the rest of the body.

You want rock hard abs and a super strong core?

Forget doing hundreds of situps… Try these core exercises. We like to perform core work at the beginning of your workout right after our dynamic warm ups and activation exercises

These core exercises will help develop functional core stability and strength so you will have a powerful torso for dominating and if your eating right you can rip that shirt off and show off what you got!

Would You Show Her Your Abs?

The workout below is something I have been doing 2-3 times per week and it takes all of 10 minutes to do. It will improve your hip drive and protect your back all at the same time with very little time invested in it.

Men should use a 24kg or 32kg bell for both exercises and woman should use a 20kg or 24kg bell.

The two exercises are the kettlebell swing and the single arm farmers walk. It is a great coupling of exercises. What you want to do is pick a number of swings to complete whether that is 50 or 150 and do them in the least amount of sets possible until you can do all reps consecutively. So beginners pick 50 reps and perform as many reps as you can resting when needed until you reach 50 reps. If you can reach 50 reps no problem than go to 75 reps. Once you can get 75 reps in a row than go to 100 reps and so on and so forth. Make sure each kettlebell swing is clean, sharp and your hips snap making it an explosive hip thrust. Many people I see doing swings are using too much arm, too much back and not snapping their hips to perform the movement.

Once you have done all reps to complete the swings pick up your bell used in the swing and perform a farmers walk which is basically a walk holding the kettlebell at your side. Normal farmers walks are done with a weight in each hand. To unevenly load the core we are going to hold only one kettlebell and walk. Walk 25-50 yards and switch hands and repeat 2-4 times.

This simple workout is a quick and effective way to improve you hip drive which as mentioned earlier is a key component to every athlete as well as to a everday person looking to keep their hips healthy. It is also a great way to learn how to stabilize your core while moving.

Give this workout a try for a couple weeks and see how strong your back, core and hips feel!

Here is a list of the reason the kettlebell windmill is such a great exercise.

1. Decrease Back Pain
When we have lower back pain it is usually a sign of a couple of things taking place or rather not taking place in the body. Lower back pain can be caused by limited range of motion of our hamstrings. Improper function of our glutes muscle and weak core muscles. By increasing the range of motion and increasing flexibility in your posterior chain muscles like the hamstrings and glutes the lower back is alleviated from pain. The windmill position causes us to put a great stretch on our hamstrings which will usually take some stress off of the low back. What it also does is require us to brace our core in order to perform the movement and when we strengthen the core we are decreasing the amount of load gets displaced in the low back causing our pain.

2. Increased Range of Motion in the Hamstrings
The kettlebell windmill will primarily work on increasing the range of motion in your hamstrings. You cannot perform this exercise without it doing so. What I really like about the windmill is it stretches each leg individually instead of together. This allows for greater increases in each hamstring muscle because one leg is not compensating and doing the work for the other. The other nice thing about this movement is it teaches us how to fire our hamstring and glute muscles from a stretched position. In order to get up from the bottom position of the windmill you must ground your heel into the ground and fire the hamstring and glute muscles of the single leg.

3. Glute Activation
Much like the hamstring each glute muscle is being worked individually teaches us how to contract the glute muscle from the bottom position in order to get back up. This is extremely important for pretty much anyone. Without glutes being fired, you can forget about jumping, running, hitting, getting out of a chair or enjoying the midnight move:) O yeah and that back pain we talked about, that will still be present without working glute muscles.

4. Core Strengthening

The windmill is what we consider a Dynamic Integrated Stabilization exercise. While the main focus of the core is to protect your spine and back by bracing the core muscles, we are doing this in a dynamic way. Our hips are moving while our shoulders are stabilizing causing our core to work even harder to maintain it’s control of the movement being done.  This is a much more effective way of taking a basic core strengthening exercise and progressing it to increase the strength of the core musculature.

5. Shoulder Stabilization

Another awesome component of the windmill is the shoulder stability practice you get.  In order to hold a kettlebell in an over head position you are working all the stabilizers of the shoulder joint.   The windmill teaches one to pack the shoulder into it’s proper position and hold that position for a period of time while moving your body into different positions.  This will greatly decrease the risk of injury to the shoulder and give you a much healthy shoulder.

Here is a video of 3 progressions of the Kettlebell Windmill:

Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.

Here is a few tips that I think can help anyone out with their conventional deadlift.

1. Foot Position

There are two ways to figure out where to place your feet for a conventional deadlift. One way is to hang from a pull up bar and let go and land on the ground. When you land freeze and take not of where your feet landed. This is usually a good position for you to use in the conventional deadlift.

Another way which is shown in the video below is to squeeze your glute muscles and rock back and forth from foot to foot continuing to contract your glutes as hard as possible. Once you have contracted your glutes as much as possible stop rocking and take not of your feet. This is a great stance for the conventional deadlift because it allows you to be in a position to allow for full contraction of the glutes in the lift itself.

2. Bar Placement

Many times I see people place the bar extremely too close to there shins. This doesn’t allow the lifter to pull the bar at an angle toward his body. Many times if the bar is too close to our shins when we pull our hips will shoot out the back and raise up instead of contracting forward and under the bar.

Place the bar an inch or so away from the shin to start the lift. A good recommendation is to place the bar just across the back of the toes. This gives just enough space for a lifter to have a better angle of pull with the bar.

3. Tighten up the bar

The texas deadlift bar has a good amount of flex to it as do many bars made specifically to deadlift. This can cause a whip in the bar when pulled improperly and the whip can end a heavy rep real quick as well as potentially be dangerous. Most bars will bend given a certain amount of weight on them. A good tip for this is to get rid of the slack in the bar before leaving the ground. Once we set our feet, get in position and ready to pull I will tighten up my body and pull the slack out of the bar before I get the bar off the floor. I feel this creates tension in your entire body and through the bar.

4. Press Away from the Floor

Many times we are so caught up in the posterior chain and how we need to get the back of our leg muscles doing most of the work for a deadlift that we forget that we are still in somewhat of a squat position. What I try to teach and think about when I am deadlifting is pressing my heels into the ground at the start of the lift and pushing myself away form the ground. Your hamstrings and glutes will absolutely be working during this but if you can think about pushing yourself away from the ground through your quads the start of your lift will be much stronger and your posterior chain will finish the lift with much more in the tank. It can almost be taught like a leg press machine. If you have ever used a leg press and can think about when your legs are bent and the weight is close to the chest you have to push your feet into the platform of the machine and press that weight away from your body. When down in the start position of the conventional deadlift if you can think about the ground being the platform of a leg press machine and you have to push yourself away from the ground you will start the lift much stronger with more muscles involved.

Here is a video demonstrating these tips I have discussed. Leave a comment or if you have any questions just put it below in the comment section and I will be glad to help further.

Try practicing these 4 tips next time you deadlift and I think you will find that it will help a great deal. They have helped me close in on a 600 lbs pull which is more than 3x my bodyweight. Here is my latest pull of 580.

This week I start a new phase of training which is much more metabolic as opposed to more strength based.  I have switched from a 2 day upper body and 2 day lower body split to a full body routine.  I have been feeling the need for a change in my workouts for a few reasons.  First reason is to create more oxygen debt in my workout.  I want to add more conditioning into my training and performing full body workouts will do the trick. Second is that I have been feeling beat up from the long term powerlifting program and  I feel the need to add more unilateral work into my routine.  Unilateral work will do two things for me.  It will help me correct any imbalances I have going on in my hips, core, and shoulders and it will also will increase the amount of time under tension my body will get.  Instead of doing 10 reps of squats which will take anywhere from 20-60 seconds,  I will do lunges which will double that amount of time since I have to do both sides.  This requires more work from the body metabolically and will cause a better environment to burn fat during my workouts.

I will be performing a rotation with my full body workouts which will look something like this:

Week 1: 5 Full Body Workouts in 7 Days
Week 2: 4 Full Body Workouts in 7 Days
Week 3: 3 Full Body Workouts in 7 Days
Repeat 3 times

This will give me a 9 week plan which will bring me about 3 weeks from my wedding.  I will add sprint training into this phase as the weeks go on.

My Sprint Training will consist of a few different variations.  They will be performed on the beach, up hills, and with the prowler as my body gets capable of handling more work.  I will also do sprints in the form of yards.  The 2 sprint workouts I like are 6x40yd sprints followed by 4x20yd on one day and the other day will consist of 4-8x100yd sprints.  I will vary the rest interval but for the first day it will be kept to 2-4 minutes between each sprint and around 8 minutes between the 100yd sprints.

My calories are pretty steady at 2250 with a 40-30-30 split.  This has been working well for me since I have been back from my vacation.  So I will keep my calories the same as I increase my workouts during the next few weeks.  I will adjust according to my results.

Stay Tuned for Updated Photos as well as my Training Log!

Mike

I love to use this exercise as one of my assistance exercises in an upper body day. I also use it on a recovery day to increase blood flow to the chest and shoulder region. I will perform blast strap push ups after my bench workout or after a military press workout to add much needed volume to my workout. What I like to do is combine it with a pulling movement and perform each back to back for 3 to 4 sets.

This exercise puts a great amount of added stress to your stabilizers in your shoulder since the straps are not stationary and they move freely causing your shoulders to create the stability in order to perform the exercise. By doing so the body also recruits the abdominal region to help the shoulder stabilizers to hold still. This puts much needed added stress to the core muscles which in turn will create a healthier mid-section. This is a great variation to the push up and should be included in any advanced training program.

Tip of the Day: Instead of doing the normal dumbbell bench press or incline bench press after your bench press training, try throwing the blast strap push up into the routine for a few weeks. It will get you off your back and in a position that stresses your abs as well as pumps some volume into your chest region.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So what I get out of the clean up week is a average daily intake of calories that I am eating.  I started using fitday again which I haven’t done in years.  So after logging my food into fitday last week I came up with my daily caloric intake.  My average caloric intake was 2600 calories on average for 5 days of logging. With that number my first step is to maintain that amount of food for 1-2 weeks.  I do not want to drop my calories from the start because I want to give my metabolism a chance to get adjusted to maintaining a set number of calories for a small period of time before I create a deficit.  This caloric average can actually be maintain for 6-10 weeks before creating deficits from it.

At this point my goal for the next 2 weeks is to log 2600 calories EVERYDAY and keep my workouts exactly as is which I will get to later or in another blog.  I will follow this for 2 weeks in which point I will make a small adjustment to either my caloric intake or my exercise volume.  Notice I said I will make a change to one OR the other and not both.  This is key to determining what method actually works best at that time for you.  If I decrease my calories and add more exercise all at the same time I will never truly know what is causing the change in my physique.  So in two weeks I will make an adjustment to my plan.  For now the goal at hand is to get my workouts in 4 times per week with intensity,  and break my daily caloric intake down into how much is needed in each meal in regards to protein, carbs and fats and stay on a steady path for 2 weeks.

Tip of the Day: Remember to make yourself small attainable goals in order to not overwhelm yourself with the bigger picture.  I will prepare each days meals and have my workouts written out for the week in order to stay focused.

Training clients last night made for some good conversation about meal planning and fat loss.  When your goal is fat loss and getting leaner you have to remember that it is a process that requires some planning.   From my experience, if my meals are not planned out accordingly prior to the day starting than I am not as successful in getting leaner than if I do have all meals planned out.

So what if your day is filled with meetings, car rides to clients, or super busy with the kids?

Well it still has to be planned out.  I get asked quite often what do I do if I am on the road or get stuck out and don’t have a meal with me , what do I eat and from where?  This is a very common situation and I will answer this shortly but first I must give you the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear this.  If you had planned all your meals the night before and packed them up in a cooler this would not be an issue.  I know, I know you weren’t expecting this situation to happen right?  Ok but if you plan your meals prior EVERY night and bring your foods with you ALL the time than it still doesn’t cause a problem.  And even if you just pack a meal replacement in your car with a shaker than all you really need is a bottled water and you are good to go.

You see in order to lose bodyfat and get leaner you must have a plan of attack and if you have a plan of attack than you shouldn’t get caught out there with no meals ready because any sound plan of attack in regards to nutrition is going to tell you to plan your meals ahead of time.

Okay Mike I get it but what if you are in a jam and have to stop to get something to eat out?  It really isn’t as hard as some may seem to get a healthy meal out whether it be chinese food, sandwich, salad bar at a food store, etc.  There are so many healthy options today that it is almost too easy.  Here are a few quick meals for on the road:

1.  Steamed Chicken, Brown Rice and Borccoli (Chinese Restaurant) – can’t have carbs in this meal?  Swap out the brown rice for some almonds or fish oils you should have stashed in your car.
2. Chicken Breast, 2 slices of Rye Bread, Tomato, Onions, Mustard, Apple – Carbless would be over salad no bread,  fruit or no fruit, add olive oil.
3.  Cottage Cheese, Fruit, Almonds – all can be bought at a grocery store which is located at every other street corner.
4. Protein Shake with fruit and/or almonds
5. Pouch of Tuna, Apple, Nuts

So you see you can stop at a subway and get a calorie packed junk meal or you can swing into a grocery store and jam out in 5 minutes with a healthy meal,  it really comes down to your choice and what you want out of your results.  It can be difficult and sometimes it is not easy however if you work for your goals than are worth more to you.

Wednesday Meals for Mike:

Protein:
1. 9 Egg Whites, 1 Whole Egg
2. 5 oz. Chx Breast
3. 5 oz. Chx Breast
4. 40 grams in Full Strength
5. 5 oz. Chx Breast
6. 4 oz. Steak

Carbs:
1. 1 cup Oats
2. 6 oz. Sweet Potato/Broccoli
3. 2 Slices Rye, Apple
4. 25 Grams in Full Strength
5. 6 oz. Sweet Potato/Broccoli
6. Broccoli

Fat:
1. 1 Yolk
2. Fish Oils
3. None
4. 5 grams in Full Strength
5. None
6. 1 Tbsp Olive Oil

Total Calories: 2600(290P, 175C, 79C)

So far my daily average intake for the past 3 days has been as follows:

Calories: 2615, Protein: 285, Carb: 195, Fat: 75

Do you want to get ready for the summer!

Have you ever looked beach ready before?

Do you want to?

Are you ready to get SHREDDED?

Well than follow me on my journey to my wedding date in June and join me in the Summer Shred Program!

I will be posting my training log as well as my food log on my blog regularly. You will leave your logs in the comment section and we will Get Shredded TOGETHER!

Tomorrow I will start posting my food intake and my training along with tons of videos on metabolic conditioning, intervals, meal prepping tips, among various motivation tools to keep us on the path of victory.

Here is your first motivational video to get you ready for the ride, you must have a sense of humor for this one. It is a great abdominal bracing exercise that will make you laugh.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Come on,  you have to laugh……life is short:)

Stayed tuned,  tomorrow it will be rocking over here at Hanley Strength.