Imagine a wet noodle deadlifting 100kg! Knees, hips, back all moving from side to side and collapsing over. I’ve seen quite a few ‘wet noodle’ deadlifts in my time. They are more common in women, because women tend to be more mobile and curvy (e.g. narrower waist relative to hips).
I meet a lot of lifters who want to go to max all the time. I understand the temptation. You are on a roll, on the steep part of the strength curve, and you want to see how far you can push it. PBs are exciting, they are something to celebrate! But going to max […]
Recently I’ve been seeing a lot of people using a deadlift stance that is too wide. This limits the amount of weight you can pull off the floor and in some people can put unnecessary strain on the knee ligaments. I often get clients coming to me who have been lifting before and want to […]
At our last powerlifting team training session, I had the athletes doing sets of 4-6 reps on the bench press at 85% of max. It’s quite tough! One of my athletes did her first set, ably spotted by her training buddy. Rep 5 was a bit of a grinder but she managed it. I was […]
This article is about the rear foot elevated (rfe) split squat and the split squat – the variations I use with my clients, how I use them, and the reasons I use them. I hope you will take plenty away from this article, but do bear in mind that there are many other variations and […]
Picture the scene: a typical Monday evening in a commercial gym. The place is rammed! Yes, there are so many treadmills that one or two are still available, but you are here to lift weights and get stronger, dammit! A treadmill ain’t gonna cut it. The weight room is also rammed. Every bench is taken, […]
Many clients come to me saying that they can’t squat below parallel. It turns out that after working with me for a session or two, around half of them can squat below parallel. And the rest have all improved their squat depth significantly. I’d love to say I’m some kind of mad genius, but my […]
As a strength personal trainer, I have lost count of the number of people who have said to me “I don’t want to lift heavy because I am afraid I will injure myself”. But it’s perfectly possible to injure yourself with a warm up weight, lifting weights the right way with proper form is the […]
Picture the scene: you rock up to the gym all excited to do your 5×5 squats, only to find the squat rack is occupied by three dudes doing endless seated shoulder press. You immediately panic about your lack of ‘gainz’ and sulk because no exercise can possibly come close to the awesomeness that is the […]
Pull ups! We all want to be able to knock out them out like a marine. In the eyes of many, it’s the ultimate show of strength – especially when you don’t have a barbell handy! But getting that first pull up seems incredibly hard.