Drop sets involve doing a set to failure with weight then straight away doing another set to failure with less weight. This can be done by reducing the weight once (double-drop), reducing the weight twice (triple-drop) or using every successive sets of dumbbells down a rack (down-the-rack).

Drop sets allow you to use more of your muscle fibres during an exercise and therefore increase the intensity of your workout. A tougher workout will lead to improved muscular stamina and also muscle hypertrophy. Hypertrophy is the method of working your muscles to make them bigger. Drop sets are helpful for those looking to boost the power and intensity of their workouts.

As drop sets lengthen your set further than its usual end point, it will work your muscles much harder than usual. This increased intensity can result in more muscle soreness than usual. Drop sets are an advanced training method and should be used moderately until you are more experienced. To prevent your muscles becoming overtrained don’t over do drop sets, allow your body ample time to recover before repeating this exercise.

Written by Kate G

• Fingers should point forward

• Hands should be slightly wider than shoulder width to allow for 90° bend

• Incorporate rests between sets

  
  

  Written by Kate G

Having strong knees and ankles is an important part of keeping fit and healthy as these are areas of the body that take quite a lot of impact.  Below are some great exercises to help strengthen these areas.

• Knees – Ball squeeze squat - Place a light medicine ball between your thighs and squeeze it together whilst performing squat reps.
• Knees – Slow lunges - slow controlled lunges ensuring the knee is kept in line with the toe and the back knee comes down to a cm from the floor.
• Ankle – Balancing on a Bosu on one foot – prior to performing this get used to balancing on two feet on a Bosu with the board side under your feet.  After that stand in the centre on one foot and balance until you can do a few minutes on it.
• Ankle – Ball pass on one leg - Balancing on one leg on a Bosu or stability disc passing a medicing ball from hand to hand.

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The deadlift is a fantastic exercise to help bulk up and add strength to vital areas all over your body. It’s a compound movement which basically means it works 2 or more muscle groups. It actually works the upper legs, glutes, lower back, and abdomen to mention a few.  Below are some simple steps to follow that will really help improve your deadlift.

Start light(er)! – You may be able to already deadlift a decent amount of weight, but are you using correct technique? Starting with lighter weights can help you to get your technique picture perfect to the point where you can lift effectively with a lower risk of injury. Once your lifting technique is solid, you can move on to lifting heavier, safe in the knowledge that you are working effectively.

Isolate muscle groups – As this exercise is a compound movement, it makes sense to also isolate smaller key areas as well. The majority of the large muscle groups grow far more beyond their smaller counterparts, which means that over time an imbalance will occur. If you want to progressively up your weight, then you’re going to have to spend a little time each fortnight working on smaller areas such as your abs and lower back. As you begin your deadlifting conquest, add some core work on a stability ball to the mix at the end of each session. That way you’re body will remain prepared for the future onslaught!

Keep a journal – OK, so this is pretty important. When loading an Olympic bar, you are better off knowing what weight you lifted last time around. Just guessing is not good enough when it comes to exercises like this one. Not knowing your limit is a sure fire way to injure yourself! Take my advice, use a journal. On a positive note, it will help encourage you to lift heavier. Check out what you achieved last week and attempt to add another 5lbs to each side. Feel easy? Add a little more! Just remember to stay safe and within your boundaries.

Before you know it you will be king of the deadlift!

Written by Oli

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Learning to squat properly

Most people who perform squats don’t perform them anywhere near correctly, there is an art to performing the squat.  To squat properly first start by standing facing a wall, direct your eyes toward the wall in front, your chin, chest and toes should all touch the wall in front.  Make sure your toes are facing outward in a 45 degree angle.   Stand with your feet a foot length wider than your shoulders with your hands ear height on the wall and equal distance apart from each other either side of your head.  Now look up and this should cause you to arch your back correctly.  Stick out your chest and lift your toes very slightly, forcing you to keep your weight on your heels properly.  Place a chair 6-12 inches behind you and lower yourself till your buttocks touch the chair and then come up again.  When lowering yourself to the chair make sure your chest is kept pressed forward and your abs tensed.

The next part is adding the bar, place the bar on the bottom of your rear shoulders, not on the top of your shoulders.  As you squat with the bar maintain your knee position don’t press your knees forward over your toes.  As you come up from the bottom of the squat make sure you keep your eyes pointed towards the ceiling, if you drop your eyes or look straight ahead you will drop the chest and put too much effort on your lower back.

Bench press grip is crucial to which part of your body you are trying to isolate.  To isolate the chest the best you are best opting for a grip which keeps your forearms at 90 degrees as you come down.  If you place your hands closer together it will take away from working the chest to working the triceps more.  To really isolate the triceps whilst performing a bench press keep your elbows tucked into your side as you come down.  You can opt for a wider than the standard 90 degree grip as you may find this hits the chest more however this can easily lead to injuries and if you can’t feel it on your chest much in this position try barbell bench press to neck.

As for your hand grip, make sure you always grip the bar low in your hand to avoid wrist pain, this is where most people go wrong.  The image on the right above is the correct grip, you can see the incorrect grip in the left picture will lead to wrist injury as the hand is bent over putting excessive force on the wrist joint.

Simply doing tons of crunches 5 times a week will get your abs in great shape but is very boring and its best to work the abs with a range of different movements to help create a much better shape.  Below are some tips on how to boost your ab workouts.

• Super slow movements- performing super slow movements will really hit the abs, try doing sit ups counting for 4 seconds on the way down of each rep.
• Weighted sit ups- wearing a weighted vest or by holding a weight plate across your chest will put more pressure on the abs, keep it pressed against your chest don’t throw it forward to help lift you up.
• Incline sit ups- change the angle which you work on to an incline, you can perform leg raises or sit ups on this and it will be much harder.
• Change your ab routine regularly- changing your ab routine regularly will shock the body and prevent it from plateauing.
• Trx, ab roller wheels etc- ab gadgets like these will help put immense pressure on the abs, these cheap gadgets can really boost your ab workout and although many people say you don’t need to spend the money I find they help keep ab workouts from becoming monotonous and they really isolate the abs.
• Combining all the above- once your abs get stronger why not try combining all the above, make up your own ab combinations and push it till you can really feel the abs fatigued e.g. sit ups wearing a weighted vest on an incline bench lowering your self slowly down over 4 seconds during the rep.

Dead lifts like squats are an exercise that can easily leave you nastily injured if you are not careful.  Below are 5 tips to help you stop getting injured.

• Don’t hyperextend the back- at the top of a dead lift don’t lean back at the top this only puts unwanted pressure down the spine.
• Don’t roll the shoulders- rolling the shoulders at the top of a dead lift can easily injure your neck.
• Keep your elbows locked- the arms are not designed to take the weight, your back and legs are what do the work.
• Keep the bar close to your body- the closer the bar to your body the smaller stress on your lower back.
• Don’t look down- looking down will push the bar away from your body by looking in front of you it will keep your chest lifted and your back in a better posture.

• Get some weightlifting shoes- proper weightlifting shoes will give you much better stability thus improving your squat.  Most people when they try proper weightlifting shoes are surprised by the difference in their squat instantly.
• Perform front squats- front squats will help improve your back squat by teaching you to perform better squats whilst in an upright position.
• The wet ice cube - when standing in a squat position imagine the position your back would go in to if someone came and put a wet ice cube on your lower back, this posture you would move into would have you standing with your lower back arched more and your chest pushed forward.
• Perform lots of warm up sets- by performing lots of warm up sets your form increases so that when you come to doing your much heavier sets you keep great form.
• Warm up on the treadmill- warming up on the treadmill for 3 minutes prior to doing squats will help increase blood flow and warm up the body getting rid of cracking and popping you often hear when doing your first sets of squats.
• Box squats- place a low bench or box under your bum and lower your self when performing squats down till your bum touches it and then go back up again. This teaches you to go really low and is a great way to measure you are doing full reps.

Most people find it hard to isolate the chest when performing flat bench press, they tend to feel it more in the shoulders and triceps.  Try bringing the barbell down to the bottom of your neck just at the start of the chest, this you will find will hit the chest more directly as the chest is forced to work through a different range of motion causing it to grow.  Be careful as although you are bringing it to touch the very top of the chest you could actually injure your neck if you were to bounce it off your chest like some weightlifters do, which is something you should also avoid doing instead opting for a controlled movement down to the neck.  Bench neck presses have been popular with bodybuilders for along time with pro’s such as Flex Wheeler and Dorian Yates swearing by them.

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