The goal of the “cutting” phase is to use a caloric deficit (eating less than you burn) to shed the fat you have put on as you built muscle (using a caloric surplus) throughout the year. Optimizing your
Alcohol consumption before exercise was once thought to be ergogenic (increasing performance), but the literature today points towards that low-moderate doses of alcohol consumption before exercise has negative effects on cardiovascular endurance. The evidence for how alcohol affects
Try to find a training partner if you don’t already have one. If that fails, don’t hesitate to ask your fellow gym-goers for a spot on your hard sets. Benching to failure with 60% of 1RM loads with
This is the first study to comprehensively examine the recovery time course of training to failure versus not, with matched volume. Muscle damage Metabolic markers of fatigue, an indirect marker of muscle damage, and high-, medium-, and low-load
If you want or need to add cardio to your strength training, it’s best to perform them on separate days, if your schedule allows. In this study, strength gains were similar when doing cardio immediately after strength training
Under most circumstances, you should probably try to apply maximum velocity to the concentric portion of each rep. When you do so, you probably don’t need to worry about internal cues (the “mind-muscle connection”). With low (50% 1RM)
Tapering is the process of making your workouts easier for to boost performance later on; supercompensation and elicited peak performance. The average amount of improvement from a taper in the literature is 3% with an expected range of
Rest-pause training can be performed with <30 seconds of rest between sets or by resting four seconds between every single rep. Rest-pause training with four seconds of rest between each rep led to more reps per set than
This meta-analysis compared strength gains with low and high volume training, in both trained and untrained lifters. The effect sizes for higher weekly volumes were ~20-25% larger than the effect sizes for lower weekly volumes, which means 20-25%
If you regularly consume caffeine in the low to moderate range of ~1-2 mg/kg/day (50-150 mg for most women, 75-200 mg for most men, or 1-3 cups of coffee), you will likely get the majority of ergogenic effects
