Best Books On Workout Programming For Maximum Impact

In my last blog, we’ve established how strength training is powerful. Changing your beliefs will help you find the best books on workout programming. But while you’re here, keep reading I might just have what you’re looking for.

Take Action

Congratulations you’ve just created a new empowered belief about strength training. Just keep in mind, in order to embed this belief deep into your subconscious and make it a more permanent part of your roots, you’ll need to repeat it to yourself daily for 60-90 days, which will create a long-term habit.

What I recommend is you write your Circle of Results Model down in your smartphone on a notepad.

Next, open your electronic calendar and write a reminder that repeats every day for the next 90 days. All you have to do is read the note when that reminder pops up, it’s really that simple.

To make it even more effective, try to memorize it and repeat it out loud to yourself.

Last but definitely not least, make absolutely sure you tell a friend or family member about your new belief and how you are committed to keeping it. This is absolutely crucial as studies show telling others about a goal helps you stay accountable and committed to upholding that belief. 

For example, in one study, researchers found that you have a 65% chance of completing a goal if you commit to someone. Additionally, if you have a specific accountability appointment with a person you’ve committed, you will increase your chance of success by up to 95%.

Take action on this and do not hesitate. If you can do this, I guarantee you’ll thank me later when your new superhuman powers start appearing from out of nowhere.

The Exercises

Now that you’ve got your roots solidified in concrete beliefs that motivate and sustain you through the tough times, it’s time to get down and dirty with the nuts and bolts of strength training. Let’s start with the first and most important question:

What Are The Best Exercises For Maximum Impact?

To be clear, while you’ll be building superhuman power and a body that is both incredibly strong and flexible, this is not a bodybuilding course that requires two hours in the gym, 15 different exercises and 50 sets 5 days a week.

Instead, we’ll take the best and most impactful exercises from the strength training canon and add them to our synergy of Fired Up power boosters.  

To do this, we’re going to be focusing primarily on movements called “Compound Exercises,” which activate the maximum amount of muscle volume per movement.

In other words, we’ll use exercises that engage as many large muscles at one time as possible. The beauty of compound exercises is that they help you build superhuman power in three primary ways:

  1. Saves Time – By training multiple muscles at once you don’t have to spend hours in the gym doing isolation exercises. This frees up time to work on your passions and spend time doing the things you love most. 
  1. Builds More Muscle Faster – Compound exercises allow you to lift heavier weights than isolation exercises, which progressively overloads your muscles and leads to faster muscle growth. 
  1. Boosts Testosterone and Human Growth Hormone – Since the total amount of muscle involved in your workout is directly related to the amount of anabolic hormones created, compound exercises significantly boost testosterone and growth hormone levels far beyond isolation exercises and studies prove this. For example, the rack squat engages over 200 different muscles and I’ll show you a variation of chin-ups, which engage your pecks, shoulders, triceps, biceps, abs, quads and hamstrings all simultaneously.

But remember, this isn’t about becoming a beer can crushing meathead.  Instead, our goal is to work towards a broad range of superhuman powers, which means in addition to those compound exercises we’ll also focus on a few key “Isolation Exercises,” which allow you to function closer to 100% capacity in daily life.

It’s all well and good to be able to bench press 300 pounds, but if you can’t lift your arm over your head because your internal and external rotator cuff muscles (supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis) are weak, injured or out of balance you may need to get a ladder to simply reach the coffee mug from the cupboard.

If you have yet to injure a joint like hips, knees, ankles or shoulders I can pretty much guarantee without working on isolation exercises, stretching and getting rid of the inflammation in your diet you will eventually encounter a major problem. If you’re at all skeptical consider the fact that in the year 2017, there were approximately 1.6 million hip and knee replacements performed in the United States alone.

The problem occurs when muscles, whose normal function is to stabilize and protect joints, are not exercised, overstressed or out of balance.  In this case, you not only become more vulnerable to injury but your daily movements become restricted.

 Fortunately, I’ve been involved in sports my whole life and have experienced the process of rehabilitation from some major joint injuries which I mentioned earlier. But you don’t need to be an athlete to tear ligaments and cartilage. I’ve had clients tear ligaments just walking up the stairs or getting out of their car. 

So while we’ll focus primarily on compound exercises, we’ll also focus on isolation exercises that help strengthen and stabilize your joints. This will essentially bulletproof your joints against future injury and increase your mobility so you can function more efficiently in daily life.  

First, let’s talk about those compound exercises.

The 3 Types Of Compound Exercise

Strength Training is not rocket science.  When it comes to compound exercises there are only three primary categories you need to remember – push, pull and legs.   

The Three Primary Exercises Are Push, Pull & Legs

The Six Muscle Groups

While push, pull and legs are the broader categories of strength training; we’ll need to focus on some specific muscle groups within those categories to design a workout that leads to your ideal body with maximum power.  Specifically, here are your six master muscle groups we’ll be building:

  1. Chest – Your chest is made up primarily from the sternocostal head of your pecs, which is emphasized in the flat bench press, while the smaller clavicular head is emphasized in the incline bench press.  Together, the flat and incline bench press will develop maximum size pecs and gorilla-like power in your chest.  
  1. Shoulders – Your shoulder consists of several muscles, the three most prominent are the deltoids: Anterior (front) deltoid Lateral (side) deltoid Posterior (rear) deltoid. We’ll be engaging these muscles in just about every exercise that uses your upper body.
  1. Back – Your back has a multitude of muscles including the Trapezius, Rhomboids, Latissimus dorsi, Erector spinae, Teres major, Teres minor and Infraspinatus.  As one of the most under trained groups of muscles, your back is responsible for pulling your upper arms toward your torso and stabilizing your shoulder blades, neck, and spine (amongst other things).  Neglecting these key muscles could lead to poor posture and shoulder injury from an imbalance between your “push” and “pull” muscles. For this reason, we’ll focus just as much time on your back as your chest and shoulders.   
  1. Arms The primary arm muscles include your biceps, triceps and forearms.
  1. Legs & Glutes – The primary leg muscles we’ll be focusing on are your Quadriceps (quads) Hamstrings and Calves. And while your glutes are not officially part of your legs they are engaged and strengthened in all of our compound leg exercises so we’ll include them here to keep it simple.  This includes the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus, which originate from your ilium and sacrum and insert on your femur bone. These hard working muscles are critical for daily function and stabilize your femur (thighbone) in your hip socket, rotate your femur internally and externally, and draw your leg back so you can stand and walk. Kind of important don’t you think?
  1. Core – Your core includes the rectus abdominis, transverse abdominis, and internal and external obliques. We’ll talk in detail about the critical nature of these muscles in our isolation exercises.

Can’t wait to get started? I got you covered! Check out the Fired Up program video course here.


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