Strength and Physique

Just a quick update: I have a couple of new articles at Bodybuilding.com: A Program for All Seasons Power Bodybuilding    This article is an online reprint of a Planet Muscle article.  It addresses training for the entire strength spectrum: explosive power, maximal strength, hypertrophy and strength endurance.  Also, Tactics and Strategies is currently unavailable. It'll be re-released soon with some additional chapters, including a chapter on ab training, which a lot of readers have been asking for. Anyway, on that note, let's answer some reader questions: Q: Hello. About the Post Exhaust Routine : Is it twice a week? Workout 1 on Monday and Workout 2 on Friday? My Answer: Hit each workout twice a week. So Workout 1 can be done Monday and Thursday, while Workout 2 can be done Tuesday and Friday. Q: I just read one of your articles on Bodybuilding.com, and I was wondering if you could help me with something. I have been riding BMX for about eight...

"I am a police officer in a small town and I am starting your strength training for the law enforcement warrior program . My goal I would like to achieve out of this program is to better my appearance in uniform. I would like to gain muscle and lose fat. I am 28 yrs old approximately 5' 8" and 145lbs with a relatively high metabolism. Only until recently have I began to gain fat weight around my mid section. "As a cop you realize that I don't have the opportunity to eat where and when I please and usually I just bite and swallow my food. My question I would like to ask is, what would you suggest as a nutritional program for this type of workout? "I do work day shift which gives me the opportunity to eat breakfast around 9:00am and then I eat lunch anywhere between 11:30 and 1:30. I then come home and eat again around 5:00 to 7:00pm. "We have a Dairy Queen, Pizza buffet, Subway, Chinese restaurant, and a soul food dinner in the town I work in. I...

Q:  "You've got a nice [YouTube] channel here. As I love doing pull ups, I decided to write a message to you. I'm wondering if it's possible to build a decent upper body without working out at the gym? I've seen something called 'Calisthenics' training which is based only on the weight of your own body. Those guys who use mostly bars in parks are really built. "So what do you think? Is it possible to build a decent muscled body and make the whole upper body strong with only pull ups and some push ups? "I've been doing pull ups for about 18 months so far. In the begining I couldn't do a single pull up. Now it's about 17 reps, but I use additional burden (2 dumbbells, 5 kgs each) so that is 10 extra kgs total. I do 5 series (10, 7, 6, 6, 5) as the 'Recon pull up program' says 3 times a week. In another 2 days I train biceps, triceps and few other parts of my body with push ups, chest expander, etc. "People sa...

Q:  I am following your Shotgun program , and after 6 weeks I'm in love with it. I do really like the template, and the possibility to choose exercises for the troubleshooting days. However I have a question about the shotgun movement of the third day, the bench press. I found that even if I lift a lot less with the dumbbell bench press (52 lbs) than the barbell bench press (132 lbs), my pecs are much more sore the next day with dumbbells. Is the dumbbell bench press intense enough to be a shotgun movement? Can it help increase strength (and eventually mass) as much as barbell? I'm working with the format 6x3. Thanks in advance for your input. Regards, Guillaume My Answer- Yes the dumbbell press performed in a 6x3 format would qualify as a Shotgun movement. Even though you are using less weight on the dumbbell bench press as opposed to the barbell bench press, the dumbbell version is superior for hypertrophy for 2 reasons: 1) There is a greater range of m...