Focus on what personally works best for you in training and nutrition, as consistent adherence to any effective method is ultimately what yields the greatest benefits.
When selecting a training split, prioritize one you will consistently stick to, as an effective split not followed yields no results.
Choose nutrition strategies that are sustainable for the long term, as non-exclusionary approaches tend to be the most effective for lifelong health and adherence.
Ensure your nutrition plan includes foods you genuinely enjoy, as any plan based on disliked foods will not be sustainable long-term.
Be open to exploring various training splits or eating styles, as finding an approach you genuinely enjoy and can stick with is key to long-term adherence and success.
To achieve an athletic physique, adopt an athlete’s training methodology, focusing on both strength and conditioning.
Aim for a 60% strength training and 40% conditioning split in your weekly exercise routine to balance both aspects effectively.
For a balanced routine, dedicate three days to strength training (e.g., Monday, Wednesday, Friday) and two days to conditioning (e.g., Tuesday, Thursday), which can be done at a gym or home.
Aim to complete your workouts in an hour or less, as this duration is generally effective for overall health without excessive length.
Choose between training long or training hard, but avoid attempting both simultaneously, especially as you age, as excessive length can cause more problems than intensity.
Avoid upright rows due to their potential to compromise shoulder mechanics and instead prioritize exercises that promote external rotation to maintain long-term shoulder health and proper biomechanics.
Substitute upright rows with high pulls, ensuring your hands are higher than your elbows to maintain external rotation and achieve similar muscle benefits for shoulders, delts, and traps without compromising joint health.
When raising your arms overhead, ensure you externally rotate your shoulders to maintain normal joint mechanics and prevent stress and potential injury.
Actively strengthen the external rotator muscles of your hips to ensure proper biomechanics and prevent future issues, mirroring the importance of shoulder external rotation.
Strive to balance muscle tension across your body, addressing weak or overly tight areas to prevent adaptations and compensations that can lead to dysfunction and pain.
When gripping a bar or dumbbell, especially for pulling exercises, ensure the weight is deep in the meat of your palm, with knuckles over the bar, to prevent stress on distal finger muscles and medial elbow pain.
If experiencing medial elbow pain, identify pulling exercises where your grip might have drifted to your fingertips and consciously deepen your grip into the palm to alleviate strain.
For inflammatory conditions like golfer’s elbow, temporarily cease exercises that cause pain and explore alternative movements or machines that train similar muscles without exacerbating the stress.
Perform a “cramp test” by flexing a muscle until it almost cramps; if you can achieve this, it indicates a good mind-muscle connection and the ability to stimulate that muscle effectively under load.
Develop a strong mind-muscle connection for every exercise, as the ability to engage the target muscle varies and is crucial for effective training and hypertrophy.
To achieve muscle hypertrophy and improved muscularity, actively seek and embrace discomfort during your training, as a lack of discomfort may indicate ineffective stimulation.
Customize your pre-workout nutrition to whatever allows you to perform at your highest level, as optimizing performance is the most crucial factor.
Monitor your grip strength as it is a strong indicator of systemic performance and recovery, reflecting your nervous system’s readiness.
If your daily grip strength measurement shows a drop-off of 10% or more, consider skipping your workout that day, as your systemic recovery may be compromised, limiting beneficial output.
Use an old-fashioned bathroom scale to measure your grip strength by squeezing it with your hands, providing an accessible way to track recovery.
Use muscle soreness as a primary indicator for local muscle recovery; avoid training a muscle group if it is still significantly sore.
Prioritize sustainable, non-exclusionary dietary approaches like a low sugar, lower fat diet. If an exclusionary diet helps you gain control initially, use it but transition to a sustainable approach.
Use the “plate method” by dividing your plate like a clock (9:20 to 12:00) and dedicating the largest portion to fibrous carbohydrates (green vegetables) for micronutrients, fiber, and satiety.
After fibrous carbohydrates, dedicate the next largest portion of your plate to protein, ensuring you consume protein with every meal, especially if you are active or building muscle.
Allocate the smallest portion of your plate to starchy carbohydrates (e.g., sweet potatoes, rice, pasta), including them in moderation rather than excluding them entirely, to satisfy cravings and provide energy.
Ensure you consume protein either before or after your training sessions, as this is important for muscle recovery and growth.
If consuming protein pre-workout causes digestive discomfort or impairs your workout performance, shift your protein intake to after your training session.
Disregard the strict “anabolic window” for post-workout meals; focus instead on responsible, consistent nutrition rather than urgent timing.
For a simple pre-workout, consider consuming water and a form of caffeine to fuel your session and maintain high output.
Make your warm-up an integral and significant part of your workout, as it becomes increasingly important for injury prevention and performance, especially with age.
Use dynamic stretching to prepare muscles for performance and increase readiness by exploring the ends of the range of motion without disrupting length-tension relationships, also aiding warm-up and blood flow.
Incorporate dynamic exercises like leg swings, butt kicks, and walking lunges into your warm-up to excite the nervous system, increase blood flow, and prepare muscles for activity without impairing performance.
Mix up traditional conditioning with footwork drills like ladders or line drills, as they can make conditioning more engaging and provide additional benefits.
Perform passive stretching far away from your main workouts, ideally at the end of the day, to avoid disrupting motor patterns and to promote healing with maintained length rather than shortening.
Engage in passive stretching to increase muscle flexibility by decreasing the muscle’s resistance to greater range of motion, rather than solely increasing its length.
Maintain a training journal to increase awareness of your performance and set objective goals, as having clear targets makes them significantly easier to achieve.