Calves are one of the more simple muscles to train in the gym, due to the limited number of movements they are involved in. Use these small tips to take your calf training up a gear.
1 USE THE FULL RANGE Whilst this applies to most exercises, it is all too easy when training calves to cut your range short and miss out on utilising the entire range of movement. Whilst you perform calf raises, make sure you stretch all the way down, as far as you can, and then during concentric portion take the weight all the way up,where you should feel a strong contraction in your calves. 2 VARY STANCE WIDTH When training calves, it is important to note how stance width changes the target of the movement. When your feet are out wide, just wider than shoulder width, you’ll be targeting the muscle on the inner part of you leg, then with your feet together, you’ll be hitting more of your outer calves. Change up your stance width when training calves to change how you hit them. GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX
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Whilst there are many different targets in fitness, many people go to the gym with the goal of looking better in mind. Whilst with most muscle groups people want to make them bigger to look better, so they train them with heavy weights and/ or high reps to push them to grow. With abs however, this will not be the best goal. Training the abs with heavy to get them bigger may actually detract form your overall shape by making your waist look thicker.
So when training abs, we always recommend avoiding heavy weight, so that they can be trained whilst keeping your midsection small. Any ab exercise that makes your stomach protrude out should be avoid, so exercises with your feet hooked under a bar, or with a weight should be kept to a minimum when training your abs for appearance. By keeping to crunches or vacuums it will allow you to work your abs but also avoid your core becoming thicker. To perform vacuums, blow all the air out of your stomach, then suck it in and hold for 10 seconds. Sample Ab Workout 15 crunches 10 sec vacuum, 10 sec rest x6 Repeat 4 times GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX Shoulders are another muscle group that people often experiencing difficulty in targeting when they’re in the gym, with triceps and traps often becoming heavily involved in movements. Here are a few tips to allow you to work your shoulders effectively.
1 PRESS FOR YOUR SHOULDERS When dumbbell or barbell pressing, many people will finish the movement with their arms straight, as high above their head as they can, and lower it only half way down. Pressing in this way will bring your triceps into it and can take the stress for your shoulders. To place the emphasis on to your shoulders, take the weight down to just above your shoulders, then press it to just above head level. This will force the shoulders to do more of the work and prevent the triceps from taking over. 2 PERFORM PROPER LATERALS When performing lateral raises, many in the gym go too heavy too fast, which causes the traps to become involved to complete the movement as a shrug action often becomes involved. By taking the weight down, it will prevent this shrug movement from becoming involved, and place more stress on your shoulders. GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX We offer a variety of leg presses and leg press styles at GAH Gym in Pontypridd. They’re great additions to the gym, and a brilliant exercise to really train your legs effectively in several different ways.
Here are some tips on how to improve your work on the leg press so that you can target different areas as well as lowering the risk of injury and keeping the exercise as safe as possible. 1. Push through your heels. Never let your heels come off the platform so that the weight is on the balls of your feet, keep the weight moving through your heels at all times. 2. Place your feet hip width and straight on to target your quads, place them higher and wider at a slight angle to target your glutes, hamstrings and inner thighs. 3. Never lower the weight so that your knees are touching your chest or your lower back is coming out of the seat. 4. Don’t lock your knees out at the top, this can increase injury risk and also lose tension in the working muscles. GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX One of the things we offer at our Pontypridd gym is a variety of resistance bands ranging from 50 to 170lbs
Training with bands can add variety to your training in a similar way to adding chains. They will cause a movement to become harder as they become more stretched. So whilst at the top portion of a leg press, for example, when the movement is usually at its easiest point, adding bands will cause more and more tension to be added, making the movement harder as you press higher. Bands can be added to machines or bars or used by themselves over a variety of exercises in the gym. Examples of using bands in training: Leg Press (looped around lower fixings and weight bars) Hack Squat (looped around lower fixings and weight bars) Bicep Curls (standing on bands, gripping band with both hands, or with a bar) Bench Press (looped around bar and attached to floor or above) Chin Ups (aiding the movement, looped around feet or knees) Tricep extensions (looped around chin up bar) GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX Bicep curls are on of the most common exercises performed in the gym, but as with anything, there are always improvements that can be made. Improving the way you do these exercises is quick, simple and can make a huge
difference. Improve your bicep curls with these 2 simple tweaks 1. At the bottom of the movement, completely straighten your arm, contracting you triceps for a short moment. This will ensure your biceps are getting fully stretched throughout the movement. 2. Lean slightly forward whilst preforming them. This will allow you to maintain tension on the biceps throughout the movement, and ensure you don’t lose it at the top, when the biceps are at their shortest Try these changes next time you’re in the gym GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX Pendlay rows
A back exercise you don’t see performed very often in the gym. A barbell rowing movement, with the added pause on the floor that keeps your reps explosive and prevents you using momentum to aid your lifts. Performed like a bent over row, start with the bar on the floor, place your grip just wider than shoulder width, a slight bend in your legs, trying to keep your back as straight as possible. From there, row the bar close to your body trying as much as possible to keep your body at the same angle, with your back straight, and your legs out of the movement. This is harder movement than standard barbell rows, so take the weight slowly to find your level. GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX Go even further in the gym by using negatives to finish sets.
Your muscles are stronger during the negative phase of exercises, i.e. when they’re lengthening, so even once you’ve failed in a set you will still be able to get a couple of negative reps out to finish the set. To perform negatives, at the end of a set, once you can’t finish a rep properly, use a partner to help to get to the end point of the movement, and then lower the weight in a slow, controlled manner. You won’t be able to get many of these reps, but they will be a great way to finish keep your sets going beyond initial failure. GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX Whilst in the gym, you see a lot of people either struggle to activate their chest or injure themselves whilst training it. It’s not uncommon for people to say that they can never feel their chest working and that they feel that their arms are doing all the work.
However there are a few small changes that you can make whilst training chest that can lower the risk of injury and also allow you to place more emphasis on the muscle that you want to target. 1 KEEP YOUR SHOULDERS BACK AT ALL TIMES If you let your shoulders come forward and your chest become concave, as many do at the end of a press, the emphasis will come off your chest and on to other muscle groups. If you keep your shoulders back and chest up throughout the movement, it will help you keep the stress on your chest. When you perform chest flys and particularly pressing movements, try to stop once you’ve reached the highest point you can without your shoulders coming forward. 2 DON’T LOWER THE WEIGHT TOO FAR A lot of people in the gym will lower the weight as far back as they can when doing press and fly movements. Whilst some may say that you should use as much range as you can, lowering the weight too far can take the emphasis off your chest and place strain on your shoulders. This will make it harder to engage the chest again and will also increase the likelihood of injuring your shoulders. To avoid this, and to keep the stress on your chest, lower the weight to the point where your elbows are level with your shoulders. You should still feel a stretch in your chest, will also find it easier to maintain tension as well as avoiding unwanted strain on your shoulders. GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX Change up your cardio and fitness training with some high intensity functional training.
At the GAH gym in Pontypridd we carry prowlers, sleds, battle ropes , sledgehammers and tires that can give you a quick, effective alternative to traditional cardiovascular fitness training. Protocol 1: Battle ropes swings alternating arms 20 sec Battle ropes swings arms together 20sec 30 sec rest, repeat 5 times Protocol 2: Prowler Pushes 1 length (Approx. 20m), 20 sec rest 2 lengths, 20 sec rest 3 lengths, 20 sec rest 4 lengths, 20 sec rest 3 lengths, 20 sec rest 2 lengths, 20 sec rest 1 length Protocol 3: 25m prowler push pull W/ rope back to starting point 25m prowler push pull W/ rope back to starting point Repeat 4 times, 1 minute rest in between GAH Gym Unit 38, Albion Industrial Estate, Cilfynydd, Pontypridd, CF37 4NX |
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November 2018
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