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The Best Hack Squat Alternatives (Barbell, Dumbbell & Machine)
Hack squats are a variation of the squat that puts more emphasis on your quads and less on your postural muscles. There are two reasons people choose hack squats instead of regular squats, giving us two ways to swap them out:
- Greater range of motion: Hack squats make it easy to work your quads through a deep range of motion, probably stimulating a little more growth than back squats. If that’s what you’re after, front squats and goblet squats are the best alternatives.
- Less fatigue: Hack squats support your back, putting less strain on your spine and postural muscles. They stimulate your quads without generating as much fatigue. If that’s what you want, swap your hack squats for leg presses, leg extensions, or split squats.
If you want dumbbell hack squat alternatives, look to dumbbell goblet squats and dumbbell split squats.
If you want barbell alternatives, choose between barbell front squats and barbell split squats.
In the rest of the article, we’ll delve into the pros and cons of each exercise, then show you how to do them.
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How Long Should Your Workouts Be to Build Muscle?
A good rule of thumb is to start with three full-body workouts per week, each lasting 45–90 minutes. When those workouts start to feel too long or tiring, add a fourth day.
If you’re following a good program, 45 minutes is enough to get you around 80% of your muscle growth. If you want to get closer to 100%, you can add in extra sets and exercises, training for the full 90 minutes.
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The Best Long Head Triceps Exercises
The long head of your triceps sweeps out underneath your arm, making your arms look bigger when you flex your biceps. But don’t be fooled by its prominent appearance. It’s one of those sneaky muscles that crosses multiple joints, making it more complicated to train.
Here are the best exercises for the long head of your triceps.
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Does the Bench Press Work Your Triceps? Yes, But Only Sort Of
The bench press does work your triceps, but it only works two of the three muscle heads, and not always very well. The third head (the long head) crosses the shoulder joint, interfering with pressing movements. This cuts your triceps growth in half.
The other issue is that your triceps aren’t usually the limiting factor, meaning they aren’t always worked hard enough to stimulate much muscle growth. That’s especially true with the dumbbell bench press.
We’ll quickly cover the biomechanics, then go over the main study, and then give you some better exercises to train your triceps. There are two triceps exercises that pair perfectly with the bench press.
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How to do the Farmer Carry: Benefits & Workout
The farmer carry, also known as the farmer’s walk, involves going on a short walk while carrying heavy weights. It’s popular with strongmen and athletes but less so with bodybuilders, which is a shame. Bodybuilders could benefit from it.
Marco learned the farmer carry while studying under Eric Cressey, the head strength coach for the New York Yankees. He went on to use it with his own clients, ranging from everyday people to college, professional, and Olympic athletes.
When Marco and I started making muscle-building programs together, he convinced me that farmer carries belong there, too. Here’s why.
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What Does PR Mean in the Gym?
In gym lingo, “PR” stands for personal record. Getting PRs means your workout routine is working, that you’re adapting, and that you’re growing gradually bigger, stronger, or fitter. They’re important enough that we’ve named our website after them.
If you’re lifting weights, a PR is when you outlift yourself. Usually, it’s the heaviest weight you’ve ever lifted or the most reps you’ve ever gotten. For example, bench pressing 225 pounds for the first time is a PR. Doing 20 push-ups in a row for the first time is another PR.
PRs are similar when doing cardio. If you’re running, then you can set a new PR whenever you run further or faster (or with a lower heart rate) than ever before. The first time you run a 5k without needing a break, that’s a PR. The first time you run a 10k in less than an hour, that’s another PR. When you can run 10k without your heart rate passing 145 bpm, that’s another PR.
As a beginner, you should be getting a new PR almost every workout. As you get better, you’ll need to fight harder to keep adapting, and the PRs won’t come as easily or as frequently. Mind you, the PRs you do get will be much more impressive.
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The 5 Best Compound Exercises for Building Muscle
All the best muscle-building programs are built on the idea of progressively overloading the big compound exercises. If you aren’t able to progressively overload those exercises, then you won’t build muscle. And if you can’t build muscle, then you won’t be able to progressively overload your exercises.
Most bodybuilding programs prioritize effort. They emphasize doing more sets and reps, pushing harder, and focusing on the pump, the pain, the burn, and the strain. After all, pain is the feeling of weakness leaving the body, right? It can be, but your effort is only productive if it adds up to progress. That’s where strength training comes in.
Strength training is rooted in powerlifting, where your strength is determined by how much you can squat, bench press, and deadlift for a single repetition—your total. If you’re getting stronger at the big compound exercises, you’re improving. If you aren’t, the problem is immediately evident, allowing you to fix it right away.
However, strength training has its own problems. Low-bar back squats aren’t the best compound exercise for building muscle. Neither are wide-grip bench presses or wide-stance sumo deadlifts. The emphasis on progression is fantastic, but the exercises aren’t ideal.
We can combine both approaches. We can choose the best compound exercises for our goals, then attack them with the vigour of a bodybuilder and the focus of a powerlifter. If you can grow gradually stronger at the best muscle-building exercises, you can consistently build muscle.
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Drag Curls Aren’t As Good As Regular Biceps Curls (Here’s Why)
A drag curl is a type of biceps curl where you keep the weight close, “dragging” it up your body. The idea is to make the curl easier at the bottom and harder at the top. This makes the biceps curls worse in two ways:
- You’ll stimulate more muscle growth by challenging your biceps at the bottom of the range of motion, not the top. There’s no benefit to emphasizing the top. The entire purpose of the drag curl is misguided.
- To keep the weight close, you need to bring your elbows back behind your body. This movement at the shoulder joint prevents the long head of your biceps from engaging properly.
This might make it seem like I hate drag curls. I don’t. You can use them to build bigger biceps. They’re a perfectly fine exercise. However, regular biceps curls are quite a bit better, so it’s hard to think of a situation where you’d want to do drag curls.
If you want to stimulate more muscle growth with your biceps curls, you should do almost the exact opposite of a drag curl. I’ll show you how.
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Does Exercise Reduce Inflammation? How? And How Much?
Exercise both increases and reduces inflammation. The stress of exercise causes a surge in inflammation. This inflammation helps you recover and adapt. When that inflammation fades, it drops down to a lower baseline, reducing your overall levels of inflammation.
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How to Optimize Your Stimulus-to-Fatigue Ratio (SFR)
The Stimulus-to-Fatigue Ratio (SFR) is a way to compare how much benefit a workout stimulates against how much fatigue it generates. The idea is to increase the stimulus while reducing the fatigue. For example, if you’re trying to build muscle, you could try to stimulate more muscle growth without generating as much fatigue.
At first, this can create the illusion that fatigue is bad and should be minimized, but it’s not quite that simple. Fatigue can also provoke adaptations, helping you grow bigger, stronger, and fitter. You don’t want to min-max away those benefits. Better to stimulate as much muscle growth as you can without generating too much fatigue.
Finally, you can improve your body’s ability to generate energy and recover from training. One of the best ways to reduce fatigue is to become not just bigger and stronger but also fitter.
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