I’m constantly asking clients during sessions, “Where do you feel this?” “What do you feel working?”
I ask these questions for a couple of different reasons.
One, I want them to focus on the correct muscles activating and working to make sure they are getting the most out of the move.
And two, I want them to build their mind-body connection so they can actually get stronger and more efficient with the movements.
Because, amazingly, just because someone has good form doesn’t mean they are actually activating the correct muscles and forcing them to work.
You would be amazed and surprised by how many people lack a real mind-body connection – a real awareness of what muscles should be working and activating.
Heck, many people can’t even get the correct muscles working and isolated during movements.
Yet they are all out there working out, adding a little more weight or doing a few more reps.
And then they wonder why they aren’t getting stronger. Why their pull ups aren’t getting better. Why they constantly have aches and pains in areas that shouldn’t really be getting as worked as they are.
It’s all because they haven’t established a proper mind-body connection – it’s because they’ve skipped the Activation Step.
The Med Ball is a great piece of equipment that you can use to work on your power as well as your aerobic endurance. It is also a great way to get in a full-body, core-intensive workout.
However, unlike when you lift and you constantly want to be challenging yourself with weight, when you do Med Ball Exercises, more weight isn’t always better.
With Med Ball Drills, you want to use only as heavy a ball as you can while still being explosive and moving quickly. Explosiveness and power are more important than going heavy.
Even when you work on endurance, you don’t necessarily want to go super heavy. You want to use a heavy enough ball that you are challenged during the time you work, but also a light enough ball that you can keep moving at a consistent pace.
While lifting more weight to challenge your body is important, adding weight isn’t necessarily always the answer, especially with certain drills. The Med Ball is a great chance to work on your speed and explosiveness and even your reaction time. And going heavy and moving slowly because you are using too heavy a ball isn’t going to accomplish that.
When doing these 18 Med Ball Drills think explosive, quick and powerful and then think about adding more weight only if you can stay as explosive and power.
Or if you use some of these drills to build your aerobic base during your active recovery workouts, go light and think consistent movement. Only add weight if you can continue to work in that 65-85% of your max effort range. You aren’t trying to redline or burn yourself out during the endurance work!
Isometric Exercises are a great way to build mobility, stability and strength in your lower body.
While most people include dynamic and static stretches in their workout routine, they often forget about the importance of Isometric Moves to developing mobility and even flexibility.
Dynamic and static stretches do improve your flexibility and mobility; however, they don’t at the same time strengthen and build stability through that new range of motion.
Then when we go lift, even after doing the stretching, we often don’t work through the increased range of motion, which simply means we tighten everything back up only to have to stretch out and loosen up again.
By including Isometrics, you not only improve your flexibility and mobility, but you also work and strengthen through the new range of motion to help you keep the increased range of motion.
And, by doing Isometrics, you can learn to activate and feel the correct muscles working during the movements so that, when you go to lift weights, the correct muscles are being recruited through a full range of motion!
Below are 15 Leg Isometric Exercises you should include in your workout routine to not only improve your hip mobility and the flexibility of your legs, but also strengthen and build stability.
To work your back, you need to include Pulling Exercises in your workout routine.
However, not all Pulling Exercises are exactly the same because there are a lot of different muscles that make up your back that are worked to different degrees by different movements.
The two most basic types of Pulling Exercises you need to include in your workout routine though are the Vertical Pull and the Horizontal Pull.
Both work the muscles of your back differently and activate and target different muscles.
The most common bodyweight Vertical Pull is the Pull Up/Chin Up while the most common bodyweight Horizontal Pull is the Inverted Row.
Both moves need to be included in your workout routine and activate different muscles of your back to different degrees.
And while the Inverted Row is often used to help beginners work up to the Pull Up, you need to be aware that these two moves are very different and that the Inverted Row is still a very important movement for even the advanced lifter to include. (The Inverted Row alone also won’t get you to that first full Pull Up because it is a different movement.)
Below we will discuss the differences between the Pull Up and the Inverted Row and even some fun variations of each move you should be including in your workout routine.
The squat is a great compound exercise to work your entire lower body and even your core and upper body.
And the best part is, there are lots of ways to change up the Basic Squat just by changing up the way you load the move down, your stance and even the tempo.
Below are a few great variations of the squat to target different areas of your body and even challenge your core more.
