The Infonian

To engage 650 muscles with only 1 dumbell, try this simple workout:

Beginning with a 15-pound dumbbell. Use slightly heavier dumbells as you advance, but don’t use dumbells heavy enough that require you to rest between exercises.

Complete the circuit by doing each exercise for 45 seconds. Rest 1 minute. Repeat 2 or 3 times.

1. Woodchopper
Keeping your arms straight and feet just beyond shoulder-width, start with a dumbbell above your right shoulder. Bend your knees and powerfully twist your torso left as you pull your arms down and across your body. When your hands reach beyond your left ankle, reverse the movement to bring the dumbell to the starting position. Then switch sides. Always contracting your abs to avoid injury.

2. Arms-out squat
Standing with your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, grab a dumbbell by the ends and hold it directly out from your eyes. Now press the ends together as you simultaneously thrust your hips back, bend your knees, and lower your body until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Pause, then drive your legs back up.

3. Standing pressout
Keeping your feet at shoulder-width, grip a dumbbell by its ends and hold it by your chest. Try to press the ends together as you simultaneously trust the dumbbell away from your body and slightly up to eye level until your arms are straight out. Pause, and pull the dumbbell back as you pull your shoulder blades together.

4. Towel row
Secure a towel around a dumbbell’s handle. Grasp an end of the towel with each hand and stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent. Bend at your hips, keep your lower back straight, and lower your torso until it’s almost parallel to the floor. Pull the towel ends to either side of your abdomen. Pause and lower the towel.

By not incorporating reps in this speed routine, you’ll concentrate on form and activate more muscle fibers, says creator C.J. Murphy, co-owner of Total Performance Sports in Everett, Massachusetts. Complete the circuit by doing each exercise for 45 seconds. Rest 1 minute. Repeat 2 or 3 times.

Author: Will Werner

You might presume Rest Pause Training is the way a few guys at the gym take long rests in between their sets of bicep curls, talking with their buddies way more than they should. The reality of rest pause training is far from using your resting time to catch up on the latest bodybuilding gossip. In fact, the Weider’s Principle of Rest Pause Training entails tricking the target muscle into going way beyond failure with a weight that you would generally be able to lift for only a few reps.

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This trickery is a result of both chemical and psychological reactions. The brief rest periods encourage the muscles rapidly recover by permitting them to refill their stock of phosphocreatine, the same molecule that’s excited when you supplement with creatine. Using this additional shot of energy, the muscle can contract with added power, making bigger force and additional reps. Using this strategy, you WILL get increases in strength and size, along with a bigger ego.

Weider’s Principle of Rest Pause Training is generally used in two ways.

You could train for size by repping to failure, resting for 10-15 seconds, then repeating this until repping to failure once again. Doing this 2-3 times per set causes the muscles to contract overtime and forces the chemical alterations within muscle cells that produce growth.

You can also train for strength by using a weight which allows you to accomplish 3-5 reps, then doing one rep, rack the weight and wait 15 seconds, then do another rep. Repeat this until you complete 4-6 reps overall. This is one rest-pause set for strength.

Instead of keeping the spotlight on either size or strength, we have created for you an alternating rest pause training routine that modifies the two workouts to give you the chance to train for both hypertrophy and strength gains. To simplify this for you, lets look at one-arm and one-leg weightlifting exercises.

Utilizing the dumbbell curl as an instance: Pick a weight that your able to use to finish 6-8 reps. Then complete 3 reps with your right arm, do the same with your left arm. Switch arms again for another 3 reps. Endure in this style, doing 3 rest-pause sets for 3 reps, then two rest-pause sets for 2 reps, finishing off with one rest-pause set for one rep.

After completion, you will have endured 14 reps on each arm with a weight that you could generally complete only 6-8 reps. This method forces not only the target muscle/s to grow but also encourages their pure strength. Studies show that when executing unilateral exercises, your able to lift more than 50% what you could lift with both limbs! If these numbers don’t tell you to incorporate Rest Pause Training into your workout routine, then you might as well be the guy in the intro of this article.

Author: Will Werner

Bicep Workouts

As a beginner, it’s often difficult to get into weight training and working out. Most beginners (including me when I was a beginner) don’t want to approach the big guys and ask them questions about workouts and what they’re doing. In today’s article we’re going to look at the top 10 bicep workout and bicep exercise mistakes. The aim of this article is to help people who are new to bicep workout and bicep training techniques. This will ensure that bicep workout and exercise beginners build the most muscle in the time they spend in the gym.

Bicep workout mistake #1 – Bad technique

I go on and on about this on eBicep.com that bicep exercise technique is very important to build big biceps. If you cheat during by swinging the weight or not lifting the full range of motion you are only cheating yourself. For details on how to do each bicep exercise correctly, see eBicep’s bicep exercises section.

Bicep workout mistake #2 – Too many sets!

There have never been a rule that says more sets = bigger biceps. It’s all about quality or training. You are better off doing 15 sets of quality bicep workout exercises than doing 30 sets of poor form rubbish. You need to concentrate on every rep of every set, watch your bicep muscle as you pull the weight up – focus on it. Just remember, a small amount of quality training will build bigger muscles than a large amount of poor quality training.

Bicep workout mistake #3 – Overtraining

Overtraining so very common, especially in a competitive environment like bodybuilding. As a general rule for all muscle groups (not just biceps): if the muscles you are about to train are still sore from your last workout, don’t train them. Simple as that. As you’ll see from my next point, resting is more important than training.

Bicep workout mistake #4 - Not enough rest

To someone new to working out, this just sounds plain stupid. Buy as experienced muscle builders know, rest is a very important part of building your muscles. When you workout your bicep muscles you’re actually breaking and tearing them (that’s why they “pump up”). And when you rest and sleep your muscle grow and repair. Not enough rest = not enough muscle growth. rest up!

Bicep workout mistake #5 – High reps / light weights

One of the most commonly asked questions in muscle building is, “how many reps should I do to build the most muscle?”. There’s is no straight answer to this because there’s so many variables. There is 1 common rule though, heavier weights/less reps = bigger and stronger muscles. So to get the most out of your bicep workout, drop the reps down to 6-8 on your big bicep exercises and do a few extra sets.

Bicep workout mistake #6 – Same old routine

After a few months of doing the same workout, your muscles will get accustomed to the workout and stop growing. This is called a plateau, and every muscle builder hit’s it at some stage. You need to mix up your bicep workouts every 2-3 months. Change days, change exercises, workout your biceps with a different muscle group. Mix it up, you’ll see and feel the difference!

Bicep workout mistake #7 – Pre-exhausted biceps

It’s important when planning your bicep workout that you don’t work any other body parts that use the biceps before your bicep workout. For example, a big mistake I see all the time is training the back then the biceps. This is not good for your biceps because all the back exercises use biceps as a secondary muscle group. So don’t train your back before your biceps, or vice versa. Train your back and biceps on separate days.

Bicep workout mistake #8 – Wrong exercise order

If you have read our bicep workout page you’ll see that we always do our biggest bicep exercises at the beginning of the workout. These are the heaviest weight movers and need the most energy. So stick to your big exercises like bicep curl at the start of your bicep workout and follow with the smaller exercises.

Bicep workout mistake #9 – Not enough rest between sets

You need to make sure you have adequate rest between sets, other you wont be able to left heavy weights, and you will not be able to grow as much muscle. For the bigger bicep sets a longer rest is OK, take what you need and don’t rush it. If your workout is taking to long, split it over a few days.

Bicep workout mistake #10 – Poor eating

You know the saying, “eat big to get big”, well it’s true. In particular you need to eat as much protein as possible and complex carbohydrates. You need to eat small meals, more often. For more information see our food to eat to build muscle article.

Peter Simpson has been a personal trainer and muscle builder for more than 9 years. For Bicep Workout and Bicep Exercise guides see Peter’s 100% dedicated bicep workout site eBicep.com

Author: Peter Simpson

In recent years, weight training has gone from the hobby of chisel-jawed Austrian celebrities to the staple form of exercise for people of all cultures and backgrounds. Its popularity is often a source of mystery for non-believers, who often see it as an excuse for vanity and massaging one’s own ego. Whilst this may be true for a certain percentage of the population (admittedly, in my time, I’ve seen my share of bicep flexing and posturing in front of the local gym’s more reflective surfaces) there are many health, fitness, and mental benefits associated with weight training. 1) The first and most obvious benefit is the increase in size and tone of the body’s musculature. By making small tears in the muscle fibers, the resistance-based movements trick the body into over-compensating when making its repairs so that in future it can more easily cope with the weight. This size increase will be accompanied by a strength gain also, which can be useful in day-to-day life (see: moving furniture).

2) Secondly, resistance exercises cause a metabolic “spike” that allows you to continue burning an above-normal amount of calories even after the exercise period has ended. For those who are unhappy with their body composition, this is a great solution to the problem of unsightly body fat.

3) Psychologically, any form of exercise is a good idea but weight training in particular is known to cause better self-confidence and esteem. Whether this is related to the size and strength gains, a release of endorphins while exercising or simply an increased feeling of well-being is undecided, but who cares! We could all use a more positive mental attitude from time to time. If you want to get an added edge in the gym you might also like to read more on training supplements like the Maximuscle Thermobol Review

4) My last argument to extol the virtues of weight training is the benefits it can provide to sports people. It’s often forgotten that full-body fitness is hugely important, even to athletes such as sprinters, who would appear only to need use of their legs to propel them forward at such a rate. This, like many assumptions, is incorrect. The truth is that upper body muscles (especially the biceps and triceps) are instrumental in creating momentum in the running motion and that without them runners would be unable to achieve such phenomenal speeds. So, next time you’re in the gym, step off the treadmill and pick up a dumbbell!

Author: Gary Bunn

I use to be a gym rat, go to the gym and lift weights like everybody else In the beginning I made some advances. After a while, those advances stopped happening. And who isn’t motivated by the feeling of making progress?

As if by luck, I found some information on bodyweight exercises. You remember those exercises, from the physical education days? So when I started doing the bodyweight exercises, I started to feel like I was making progress again.

And then I started doing exercises with very light weight, not iron pumping exercises, but exercises that challenged me in ways like no other. And sometimes I only used as little as five pounds. I guess you could also classify these as bodyweight exercises.

Then I added to my ever-increasing routine, I started using kettlebells and balance exercises with the Swiss ball. I now have more routines than I know what to do with. I don’t think I’ll ever get bored again. Is there anything worse than dragging your butt to the gym not psyched for your workout?

When it’s time to workout, I can’t wait. Just some of the variety of exercise I’ve grown accustomed to:

1. Hindu pushups

2. Leg swings

3. Running on the mini-trampoline

4. Feet on stability ball pushups

5. Pushups, feet on stability ball, hands on balance disks

I have literally hundreds of exercises in my arsenal that I can do. There’s no wonder that I’m feeling great and in the best shape of my life. When you add variety back to your workouts, you go a long way in making a commitment to yourself to get in great shape again.

Believe it or not, everything I’ve found on the internet has been free or low cost. I never spent a lot of money, like those ridiculous infomercials. Ok, maybe I did once, but I learned my lesson.

Whenever I feel like I need more variety in my workouts again, I usually pick up another book out there on the web. Before you know it, I’m off and running again. This approach may not be for everyone, some guys like hanging around the gym. But not me!

I head down to my basement, a Swiss ball, my kettlebells, my skip-rope and I have a better workout facility than any gym can provide. And believe me, it’s at one one-hundredth of the cost. I guess you could say I’ve found the Holy Grail when it comes to staying in shape.

Author: Robert Bell