Sports & Fitness: Performance Training, Rules & Recovery

Elite athletic performance and general fitness are sustained through structured hypertrophy strategies, sport-specific conditioning, and rigorous adherence to injury prevention protocols.

Man focused on training legs on the machine

How Many Times a Week Should I Train My Legs?

Because your legs contain some of the largest muscle groups in your body, training them can be energy-intensive and challenging. You need to stimulate the muscles to help them grow, but training them too much can be counterproductive, as that doesn't give them time to rest, repair and rebuild.

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lifting weights

The Effects of Deadlifts

Weightlifters love or hate deadlifting. They love it because of its numerous benefits, hate it because it is a challenging, energy-demanding exercise. The movement simulates real-life activity such as bending over and picking up and stresses multiple muscle groups in both the upper and lower body.

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Woman sleeping on sofa

Feeling Tired the Day After a Workout

The day after a tough workout, you may feel a little tired and maybe even a bit sore. Post-workout fatigue and post-workout soreness is not uncommon, but can be minimized with adjustments to your training program, proper nutrition and obtaining adequate amounts of sleep.

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Young Man Exercise With Dumbbells

7-7-7 Bicep Exercise

Obtaining a rounded, peaking biceps muscle is what many weightlifters and bodybuilders strive for, but often struggle to achieve. Including the 7-7-7 biceps exercise -- commonly referred to as 21s -- in your workout program can help shape and develop your entire biceps area.

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Man doing exercises with barbell

What Weightlifting Exercise Burns the Most Fat?

Many factors contribute to the amount of fat burned during a weightlifting exercise. The intensity of the exercise is a significant factor determining the amount of energy used to perform the movement and whether or not the energy burned primarily comes from carbohydrate or fat stores.

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Woman Doing Push-ups

Are Wall Push-Ups a Good Exercise for the Chest?

Wall pushups are an easier version of the standard pushup and work to improve muscular strength and endurance in the chest, shoulders and triceps muscles. Because pushups are a body weight exercise, there are many ways to perform them to make them easier or more difficult depending on your fitness level.

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Ancient Greek Weight Training

Weight training became popular long before there were dumbbells, barbells and exercise machines. The ancient Greeks weight trained with activities such as stone lifting, stone throwing, wrestling and rope climbing. Training in ancient Greece, particularly for the Spartans, was structured and extremely intense.

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Active sportive woman doing handstand exercise practicing the side plank

The Best Side Plank Exercises for the Obliques

Strengthening your core is essential for maintaining health, improving posture and reducing lower back pain. Side planks and side plank raises are among the best exercises for strengthening your obliques and your internal core muscles.

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Couple eating together

Can I Eat Simple Carbs Post-Workout When on a Cut Diet?

Controlling carbohydrate intake is a key factor of your diet whenever trying to cut body fat and maintain lean muscle mass. Consuming a low-carb diet does not mean eliminating all carbs, but rather controlling and consuming the right kinds of carbs at the right times.

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Fitness for seniors

How Long Before You Feel the Benefits of Exercise?

Regular aerobic and strength training exercise offers numerous health benefits -- both short-term and long-term. In fact, after one exercise session, you may notice some physical and psychological changes.

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Overtraining: How to Workout With Stiff Muscles

It is not uncommon to experience some muscle soreness and stiffness after beginning a new exercise program. DOMS or delayed onset muscle soreness is the soreness that occurs a day or two following exercise. DOMS is primarily a result of small tears that occurred in the muscle fibers during exercise.

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Rear view of a man using a leg press machine

Vastus Medialis Exercises

The vastus medialis oblique is one of the four quadriceps muscles located on the front of the thigh and works to extend the knee joint. Weakness in the vastus medialis can result in an increase in knee injury, or chondromalacia.

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Portrait of a young woman carrying a barbell

Bodybuilding and an Uneven Chest

A well-shaped symmetrical chest is essential to a bodybuilder’s physique, and the flat bench press exercise is necessary for building size and mass in the pectoral muscles. However, limiting your chest workouts to the same version of the bench press can result in uneven chest development.

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Girl exhales while doing exercises with weights on training appa

Can You Work Out Your Shoulders One Day & Your Chest the Next?

The chest and shoulder muscles are both used in many of the same compound movements such as the bench press or military press. Training either the chest or shoulders on one day, then on the next day training the other muscle group, may result in a decrease in performance in the muscle trained on day two.

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Muscular Bodybuilder Men Doing Exercises with Dumbbells in Gym

Outer Bicep Workouts

The biceps brachii muscle consists of two heads -- the long head and the short head. The long head is also referred to as the outer head of the biceps muscle on the outside of your upper arm.

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Plus sized woman exercising, lifting weights at home

I'm Overweight: Can I Build Muscle?

People who are overweight can and should build muscle mass. Fat mass and muscle mass are two different types of tissues in the body. One common misconception is that muscle and fat can turn into each other. That is simply untrue. Muscle does not turn into fat, and fat does not turn into muscle.

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