Articles
The Best 5-Day Workout Splits for Building Muscle
5-day workout splits can be incredibly good for building muscle if you program them properly. When you’re training this often, it’s easy to beat up your hands, tire out your back, or accumulate nagging aches. Fortunately, there are simple methods for avoiding all those problems, which we’ll delve into in a moment.
My two favourite 5-day workout splits are the Bro Split and the Outlift Split. Both are similarly good for building muscle, but I have a soft spot for the Outlift split. We’ll break down both splits in detail.
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How Many Calories Does Walking Burn? (Calorie Calculator)
Most people burn about 100 calories per mile that they walk or run (study). This calculator can do a little better by factoring in your body weight. All we need to know is how much you weigh and how much you’re walking.
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What Muscles Do Dips Work?
Dips are an underrated exercise, and there’s some fascinating research to cover. They’re one of the best exercises for building muscle in your chest and shoulders—arguably even better than push-ups and bench presses.
I’ve been doing dips for over a decade, and I credit them for helping me build a big chest. They also helped me bench 315 pounds, even though I rarely do the bench press.
So, what muscles do dips work? Why are they so powerful?
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The Beginner’s Guide to Blood Flow Restriction Training (BFR)
Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Training is a strange muscle-building technique that occasionally makes its way into the mainstream. Peter Attia recommends it. NBA and NFL players use it. And you’ll see top bodybuilders and powerlifters swearing by it, too.
When you restrict blood flow, blood can still reach your muscles, but it has trouble escaping, resulting in terrifying muscle pumps. It’s unclear why it improves muscle growth, but it’s thought to stimulate the production of growth factors and other anabolic hormones. It also seems to be good for the health and proliferation of blood vessels.
BFR sounds strange and dangerous, and many people are scared of it. Surprisingly, it’s actually one of the safest ways to stimulate muscle growth. In fact, outside of athletes and bodybuilders, it’s most commonly used in rehab and with older lifters.
So, does BFR work? should you add it to your workout routine? And if so, how should you do it?
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The Anabolic Window: Both Fact & Fiction
The “anabolic window” is an old bodybuilding term. A few years ago, it was pilloried by the evidence-based fitness community, and perhaps rightfully so—the requirements were woefully strict.
As so often happens, the backlash was overly harsh. There’s some merit to the idea of the anabolic window. The truth is that most people can benefit from taking advantage of it. That’s even more true for naturally thinner people.
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How to Ruck—The Complete Beginner Guide
Rucking is perhaps the safest, most effective, and most efficient way to improve your cardiorespiratory fitness (study, study, study). It can be two or three times as efficient as brisk walking (study). It’s one of the most effective forms of exercise for burning fat (study). It’s about as effective as jogging, but it’s much easier to learn and has a much lower risk of injury.
Rucking is walking with a loaded backpack, also known as a “rucksack,” hence the term “rucking.” The term comes from military training, but its origins go back far further. We’ve been carrying heavy loads over long distances throughout all of human history.
Hunter-gatherers carried spears and shields and baskets full of forage. Men would lug large game home after successful hunts. Women would carry their young children strapped to their backs. We’ve always been rucking, just without the rucksacks.
You already know how to ruck, but there are some guidelines that help.
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Can Bulking Cause Insulin Resistance & Diabetes?
Whenever we talk about how carbohydrates can be good for building muscle, we get comments from people worried that if they eat too many carbs, they’ll produce too much insulin, and their bodies will become desensitized to it, causing insulin resistance and potentially even leading to diabetes. Can that happen?
The other concern is that bulking means eating in a calorie surplus to gain weight intentionally. Can that calorie surplus cause insulin resistance?
I reached out to Dr. Karl Nadolsky, an endocrinologist who specializes in diseases like diabetes, and Danny Lennon, a nutritionist on the Advisory Board of the Sports Nutrition Association. I asked them if skinny and skinny-fat people should worry about eating too many carbs while bulking. Could that lead to insulin resistance and diabetes?
Their answers surprised me.
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A Review of the Macrofactor Macro-Tracking App (in 2024)
We’ve now spent almost four years testing Macrofactor. We’ve used it ourselves, tested it against all its major competitors, and had over 500 clients use it to build muscle, lose fat, or recomp.
Macrofactor is a calorie-counting, macro-tracking app created by Greg Nuckols, one of the most respected research reviewers in the fitness industry. It’s built on good muscle-building and fat-loss principles, boasts a clever algorithm, and is impressively precise.
However, there’s more to a good calorie-counting app than good science. How easy is it to use? How much of your time will devour every day? And perhaps most importantly, how does it compare against industry giants like MyFitnessPal?
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The Best Shoulder Exercises (For Your Front, Side & Rear Delts)
Your shoulders are made up of three different heads—the front delts, side delts, and rear delts. Each head moves your shoulders in a different direction, so each needs a different type of exercise. You need a mix of pressing exercises, lateral raises, and pulling exercises.
In this guide, we’ll go over the best deltoid exercises for each head and then combine them together into a balanced shoulder workout.
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The Best Shoulder Day Workout for Building Muscle
Shoulder Day is a workout designed to bulk up your shoulders, making them bigger, stronger, and broader. You can also use it as an opportunity to sneak in some extra chest, back, or arm work, rounding out your workout routine.
In return, you can sneak some shoulder exercises into your other workouts, increasing the training frequency for your shoulders and provoking even faster shoulder growth.
You can do Shoulder Day once per week as part of a Bro Split or twice per week as part of a shoulder specialization program. We’ll show you how to do both.
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