You will often hear or read people debating the merits of training with free weights or machines. Most people seem to fall into one camp or the other. A lot of it comes down to individual circumstances: the purpose of one’s training, a bad experience with one method, or simply a personal preference. I am [...]

I admit I am sometimes guilty of ‘ego lifting’, i.e. lifting more than I can manage with perfect form just to be lifting heavier. You see it in every gym in the land but it’s a bad thing to do in the long run. After all, how cool is it to pop a disc in [...]

Watch the press-ups video clip on youtube! The press-up (or push-up) is one of the most versatile exercises out there. A lot of people are put off them because they think they are boring or they associate them with army seargants shouting in your ear. But the simple press-up deserves another look. Abs/core exercise Press-ups are [...]

Deadlift is my favourite lift at the moment and I am aiming really to increase it over the next few months. Here’s a clip of me doing some light deadlifts, trying to maintain good form throughout. The deadlift is probably the simplest concept there is: pick a big weight up off the floor. I don’t [...]

I have abs of steel but I am a sit-up free zone. I don’t think sit-ups are useless, but I do think there are better exercises out there so I don’t bother with sit-ups in my own workouts. So what are these better exercises? Well, anything that involves working to maintain your balance is brilliant [...]

There is absolutely no reason why you, dear reader, can’t train to do a pull-up. It’s not easy, but it is achievable. Men are usually slightly better equipped for pull-ups as they naturally have more muscle mass and upper body strength but most of them find pull-ups one of the toughest exercises as well. Although [...]

I saw a snippet about the Tactical Strength Challenge competition in Ultra Fit magazine. There are three events: deadlift, pull-up and kettlebell snatch. According to the website, the purpose of the Tactical Strength Challenge is to test absolute strength (deadlift), bodyweight-relative strength (pull-ups), and cardiovascular endurance (kettlebell snatches). The three events test a trade-off between [...]