“In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired.” ~Author Unknown

Rant and Tip for November 2, 2011

Quote: “In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired.”  ~Author Unknown

Now this is a quote I can understand and appreciate. I was sick and tired of being fat and living an unhealthy lifestyle. I didn’t want to continue taking medications for high blood pressure because I was too lazy to get back in to shape. I was sick and tired or being sick and tired. The changes I made were both positive for my health and liberating to my mind.

I had a conversation with a friend while working late last night and we talked about how we in the US are a community that uses food as a means of celebration. We live to eat instead of eating to live. It is an obsession we have. We truly are sweetaholics. For some reason we feel we need to have a sweet dessert after a healthy meal. There are tons of different recipes for cheesecake to be found, and even some that are low-carb. I often think to myself, if we learned to eat to live we would be so much better off as a nation. I have never seen a fat lion and I can only guess that he only eats to live. I am in no way knocking people that are creative with their menus and low carb dessert recipes; I commend you for having the talent to do so.

As far as exercise today I want to talk about the deltoid, also known as the shoulders. It seems as I look around the gyms I have gone to, that many guys will have the powerful chest and big arms but their shoulders are lacking. In doing some reading, specifically John Parrillo Performance Press magazine this seems to be an epidemic. In John’s magazine he states that the cause of this may actually be all the isolation machines to “help” us with shoulder development. I myself have never liked the machines. For me, and this may be just because of my height, they do not seem to provide the correct range of motion. Free weights are the way to go. When using dumbbells and or a barbell you are also using the stabilizing muscles for the overhead press and this is a great exercise to develop those deltoids. A machine has its motor-pathway frozen into place; the machine lifter simply pushes and pulls; whereas the barbell or dumbbell lifter must push, pull and control the side-to-side sway of the poundage as it travels from start to lockout. This extra effort needed to keep a weight from swaying causes muscle stabilizers to fire and makes free-weight pressing the choice of champions when it comes to building spectacular shoulders.

Have a great workout!

Tip: The Front Press with barbell: the normal grip is slightly wider than the shoulders. Widening the grip makes pressing more stressful but as leverage drops dramatically and poundage plummets, a point of diminishing muscular returns is reached. A strong man should be able to clean (pull from the ground to the shoulders) and press bodyweight for a single rep. The barbell front press can be taken out of a squat rack to eliminate the clean. Face the barbell, shoulder it, step back, lock out the legs and torso, lean back slightly and press close to the face.