4 exercises to build rock solid and healthy shoulders

Building your shoulders has tons of benefits when trying to sculpt an athletic and strong physique. Whether you’re aiming to  push a heavy weight over your head, increase the size of your shoulders or if you’re looking for general stability, there’s no denying that a variety of exercises are needed to fully train the shoulder complex. Here are 4 exercises that you may not have heard of that will stabilise, strengthen and build your shoulders.

 

— Keep and eye out on our Facebook and Instagram pages for the videos OR you can check out the app here —

Y-Press

The Y-Press hits the anterior deltoids to a greater extent than a normal shoulder press. Instead of pressing the weight over your head, you should aim to press the weight ‘out’, aiming to make a ‘Y’ shape with your arms. Tip – Imagine you’re driving your shoulders to your ears and your elbows to the ceiling.

Poliquin Raises

The poliquin raise was developed by the Strength Sensei himself, Charles Poliquin. This exercise allows you to eccentrically load the deltoids more by shortening the level (your arms) on the concentric phase of the lift. This is done by simply bending the arms, much like a hammer curl before raising your upper arm until it is level to your shoulders.

Snatch Grip Shrugs

Not only does the snatch grip shrug hit your traps and delts hard, it will also challenge your lats and your grip strength. Due to the wide grip position of your hands, you are at a slight mechanical dis-advantage when performing this lift so a hook grip is recommended (fingers over thumbs) and it’s good practise if you do any Olympic Lifting in your program. Simply take a wide grip on the bar so that thbar sits in the crease of your hips and shrugs your shoulders up (aim for your shoulders to touch your ears). Slowly lower the weight down to the start position and repeat.

Rope Face Pulls

This exercise will challenge your rear delts, traps and rhomboids – essentially it will target your shoulder girdle and your ability to control the movement around your shoulder blades. This exercise looks simple, but notice that the delts and rhomboids are pinched back BEFORE the rope is pulled to the face. This allows for proper function of the shoulder girdle and the proper movement of the shoulder blades throughout the movement. It will also help stop you getting a shoulder impingement which you can thank me for later!

 

For exercise demonstrations, check out our FREE app (click the picture below) to view videos, pictures and exercise cues for over 250 exercises!

If you liked the blog, comment, share and subscribe to our mailing list on our website for more quality information every week.

D.N.A S&C

Food Blog – Cottage Pie

Try this tasty Cottage Pie, this meal takes a little longer 30-40 minutes (including prep), but it’s definitely worth it, with plenty of flavour.

Just follow the instructions below and you can have an easy healthy cheat meal in no time.

Ingredients List (Feeds 4)

• Low calorie cooking spray/oil.
• 1 Large onion (Chopped)
• 1 Medium Red Pepper (Chopped)
• 1 Medium Green Pepper (Chopped)
• 750g Lean Beef Mince (5% fat or Less)
• 400g Tin chopped tomatoes
• 4 tbsp Tomato purée
• 1 tsp Dried mixed herbs
• 1 Beef stock pot
• 1kg Sweet potatoes
• 200g Fat-free natural fromage frais
• 160g Reduced-fat cheddar cheese (Grated)
• This meal can also be served with vegetables of your choice.

Macros for one person

Method

Stage 1 – (15-20 mins)

• Spray a pan with low calorie cooking oil, then add the onion and peppers for 5 minutes.
• Then add the mince beef and cook until the mince is brown, while the beef is cooking add the beef stock pot.

Stage 2 – (15-20 mins)

• Preheat oven to 200°C/180°C Fan/Gas 6.
• While you are cooking your onions and peppers, peel the potatoes ready to boil them in a large saucepan of lightly salted water for 15 to 20 minutes.

Stage 3 – (5-10mins)

• Once the mince is cooked add the chopped tomatoes, tomato purée and herbs.
• Allow to simmer for 5 to 10 minutes while you drain the potatoes.
• Add the fat-free natural fromage frais, mash until smooth and set aside.

Stage 5 – (10-15 mins)

• Put the beef mixture into an oven proof dish and spread the mash over the top, then sprinkle your grated cheese on top to your preference.
• Place into the oven for 10 to 15 minutes until the top in golden brown. Then its ready to serve, Enjoy!

Let us know what you think in the comments section/on our Facebook and Instagram pages!

For exercise demonstrations, check out our FREE app (click the picture below) to view videos, pictures and exercise cues for over 250 exercises!

If you liked the blog, comment, share and subscribe to our mailing list on our website for more quality information every week.

D.N.A S&C

7 Glute exercises to build and better and stronger butt

Having strong glutes is crucial for running, jumping, lifting weights and performing daily activities. It’s also essential for a good physique, for both men and women. Working your glutes is an absolutely essential part of your training, whether you just looking for a better physique or you’re trying to develop your athletic performance. Here are 7 glute exercises that you need to include in your program to optimise their development:

1 – Squats

Squats are one of the key exercises for lower body development, as they pretty much use all your leg muscles while strengthening your core, hips, and lower back. The lower you squat the more emphasis your put on your hamstrings and glutes.

2 – Barbell Hip Thrusts

One of the best exercises for glute development. The hip thrust activates your glutes more than any exercise. Make sure you wrap a pad around the bar before putting it on your hips, this can get painful if you can load the bar.

3 – Bulgarian Split Squats

With the exercise positioning and balance is key. With this exercise the further out you put your front foot (the foot planted on the floor) the more glute activation. The closer your feet the more quad dominant the exercise. When your reach the bottom of the movement, if you lean your torso over slightly from the hips you will again increase the emphasis on your glutes (don’t lean any more than 30 degrees).

4 – Deadlift

The deadlift is one of the best exercises you can include in your program. It is one of the best total body exercises you can do. It’s great for working your posterior chain; your back, glutes, hamstrings etc, and, is great for your posture when performed correctly.

5 – Zercher Squats

A very uncommon exercise, the zercher squat is very similar mechanically to the goblet squat. The zercher squat allows for greater depth. While naturally you have to stand wider to perform this exercise, this puts more emphasis on your glutes.

6 – Barbell Split Squat

Place the barbell across your shoulder on your traps. The split squat is slightly different to a normal lunge and is more demanding. With the split squat you start in the bottom of a lunge position, this is then your start position. Because of this you therefore have to fully engage your glutes, hamstrings and quads to drive yourself up.

7 – Stiff Leg Deadlift

The stiff leg deadlift is great for developing hamstring and glute strength. This exercise needs to be performed properly to take the focus and strain off your lower back. This is done by pushing your hips back until you feel the stretch on your hamstrings. Make sure that you keep your lower back neutral and don’t let it round. Have your feet at hip width or closer to make the exercise more demanding on your legs.

For exercise demonstrations, check out our FREE app (click the picture below) to view videos, pictures and exercise cues for over 250 exercises!

If you liked the blog, comment, share and subscribe to our mailing list on our website for more quality information every week.

D.N.A S&C

5 Quick Tips for Exercise Selection

Picking the right exercises can be very confusing! Between the BS ‘functional coaches’ and the ever so insightful world of social media, there is a plethora of information that is impossible to sift through. Now, it’s not to say that all exercises are bad, it’s just that not all exercises are good – some are better than others, and some serve a very specific purpose. So how do you figure out what’s good for you, and what should be left for another time/purpose? Check out the rest of this post where we run down 5 quick and easy ways to optimise your exercise selection!

Know your goals

This is the most important factor! Knowing what you want to do will be a major influence on what exercises you pick. For example, people aiming for fat loss should spend more time on compound movements in order to recruit more muscle and burn more calories as a consequence. This links directly into the next point…

Know what the exercise does

Squats for example have a completely different purpose to a bicep curl. Obviously they target different muscle groups, but one is a compound movement, whereas the other is an isolation movement. Bicep curls wont get you ripped whereas squats are more likely to.

Look at regressions

If you want to do compound movements but cant quite manage a full lift, look at regressing the exercise. For example, a squat could be regressed into a partial range of movement (box squats or quarter squats) or an alternative exercise could be used (goblet squat, hack squat). Progress these until you manage the full exercise.

If it looks like BS it probably is

If you look at an Instagram page and it seems a bit off, it probably is. Nobody gets muscular, lean and fit by doing banded bodyweight squats (unless they’re taking some questionable ‘supplements’). You get in shape by working hard, there’s no two ways about it! Not to say that exercising can’t be fun, but ‘fun’ workouts may not always be the most effective or hard working – for example, I’m yet to find anyone who genuinely looks forward to doing a minute of burpees!

Start broad and get specific later

This is heavily linked to the principles of periodization, but no one starts off doing ultra specific workouts. As we mentioned in 6 Easy Tips For When You Start Lifting Weights, pick 4-6 core exercises and ready nail them. Pick exercises that hit more muscles at a time (squats, deadlifts, bent over row) and build the rest of your workouts around those.

 

For exercise demonstrations, check out our FREE app (click the picture below) to view videos, pictures and exercise cues for over 250 exercises!

If you liked the blog, comment, share and subscribe to our mailing list on our website for more quality information every week.

D.N.A S&C

Marginal Gains – A powerful tool to achieve your goals

In our blog, How To Beat Your Brain, we mentioned a concept called marginal gains. As promised, here’s a quick run down of what marginal gains is and how you can use it to break down your goals and make more progress than conventional methods.

The concept of marginal gains was thrust into the spotlight after the London 2012 Olympics when GB Cycling performance director, Dave Brailsford, spoke about how he used the concept to improve GB Cycling performance so much that they dominated international cycling for over a decade. Dave Brailsford summed the concept up by saying “The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together,” (Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/19174302).

This summation is pretty spot on! Essentially you can break down a problem or in our case, your goals/performance into as many sub-categories as you wish and improve on each of these parts individually. When you then look at these sub-parts as a whole, you will have a larger overall increase/improvement on your performance. In the case of GB Cycling, they were aiming for gold medals so they may have gone into more details than is necessary for some people – take sleeping in the right position for example. Yes, it may work towards achieving your goals, but it probably isn’t as important as just getting 8 hours of decent sleep if you’re currently getting 5.

Below is a simplified version for someone who is trying to loose 10 lbs of fat in 5 weeks.

Goal – Loose 10 lbs of fat

Duration – 5 weeks

Higher level factors that affect fat loss

1. Activity Levels
2. Food quality
3. Food intake
4. Sleep quality
5. Positive mind set

So here we have 5 higher level factors that will influence this goal of burning 10 lbs of fat in 5 weeks. Now, you can stop here and get going or you can break down each of these 5 factors into more sub-factors within each one. Below is the breakdown for one of these factors.

Activity Levels

1. Exercise 4 times/week.
2. Exercise for at least 1 hour for each session.
3. Walk to work and back 3 times a week.
4. Stand up every 30 minutes whilst at work (shown to significantly increase metabolism).
5. Do 10 squats, 10 press ups and 10 star jumps every morning.

 

So from picking 1 higher level factor, here you have 5 lower level factors you can focus on to reach your goal. You see how this could go on and on!

My advice would be to pick 5-10 higher level factors and really nail them. If you want to you can go deeper, but this can make things a bit over whelming to start with, which is totally the opposite of what this aims to do. 10 higher level factors with 5 lower level factors will total 50 points for you to improve on, which is quite extreme!

The take away message should be to take what seems a complex problem and break it down into smaller chunks so you can focus in and achieve your goals. If you improve by 1% on 10 factors you will have an overall increase of 10%! Which is significant!

 

For exercise demonstrations, check out our FREE app (click the picture below) to view videos, pictures and exercise cues for over 250 exercises!

If you liked the blog, comment, share and subscribe to our mailing list on our website for more quality information every week.

D.N.A S&C

Food Blog – Chicken Pesto Pilaf (thing)

If you like tasty meals that involve pesto you’ve hit the jackpot here! This meal is easy to make and is relatively quick (20 -25 mins) given that you had prepped beforehand! Its slightly high on the fats, but a lot comes from the pesto which is full of pine nuts, so its all good!

Just follow the instructions below and you can have a quick, easy healthy-ish meal in no time.

Chicken Pesto Pilaf (thing)

Ingredients List (Feeds 4)

• 500g Diced Chicken Breast
• 100g Diced Bacon/Lardons
• 60g Chopped Chorizo
• 250g Pre-Cooked Rice (Tilda, Uncle Bens etc)
• 2 Chopped Bell Peppers
• 6-8 Halved Cherry Tomatoes
• 1 Jar Green Pesto
• 1 Veg Stock Cube
• 150-300ml Boiling Water
• 2-3 Large Glugs Worcester Source
• 2-3 Large Glugs Red Wine

Macros For One Person

Stage 1 – (2-3 mins)

• Lightly oil a pan with an oil of your choice under a medium-high heat. I use extra virgin olive oil as it suits the taste of the dish.
• Add the diced bacon/lardons & chopped chorizo into a hot pan and allow to cook for 1 minute.
• After 1 minute, spread them around the pan to spread the flavour and add the chicken in, stirring it into the fats coming out of the chorizo to enhance the flavour of the dish.
• Boil the kettle!

Stage 2 – (3-6 mins)

• Cook this mixture until the chicken is white all over, but NOT cooked (see picture below).

• Add your boiling water to a vegetable stock cube and dissolve.
• Once dissolved, add the whole pot of pesto to the vegetable stock cube broth (this can be less, it just comes down to preference).
• Add the pre-cooked rice to the pan and mix into the chicken, bacon and chorizo.
• Pour the vegetable/pesto broth into the pan and mix gently.

Stage 3 – (10-15 mins)

• Stir in a good 2-3 large glugs or Worcestershire sauce and the same amount of red wine!
• Let this broth simmer and reduce for around 10 minutes until the mixture has a more ‘solid’ consistency. TIP: You should be able to see the rice clearly and if you push it up together, it slowly spreads out in the pan (see the second picture below).

Stage 4 – (2-3 mins)

• Mix in your chopped bell pepper and halved tomatoes into the mixture.
• Stir these in so that they cook briefly (for around 2-3 mins) .

TIP: You can add these in earlier, but I had mushy/soggy peppers so I add them in at the end to give it a bit of a crunch and keep the flavour in the peppers.

Stage 5 – (1 minute)

• Serve and enjoy!

Let us know what you think in the comments section/on our Facebook and Instagram pages!

For exercise demonstrations, check out our FREE app (click the picture below) to view videos, pictures and exercise cues for over 250 exercises!

If you liked the blog, comment, share and subscribe to our mailing list on our website for more quality information every week.

D.N.A S&C

5 Reasons You Should Get More Sleep in Under 300 Words

Sleep is an often overlooked, yet vital part of any healthy lifestyle. Here’s 5 reasons you should get more sleep in under 300 words.

Injury Prevention

The body recovers and repairs when we rest. Getting 6-8 hours of quality sleep is vital as part of this process. Without sleep your body won’t repair and you will likely end up injured –  the last thing you want.

Control Hormonal Balances

When you don’t get enough sleep, cortisol levels in the body increase whilst testosterone levels decrease. Getting a good bit of shut eye will reverse this effect – if fat loss or muscle gain is one of your goals, increasing testosterone levels is right up there on the to do list.

Reduce Stress Levels

Due to stress hormones, your blood pressure increases when you are sleep deprived. In extreme cases this can lead to heart attacks. Getting less sleep makes you feel more stressed which makes it harder to sleep – break the cycle by having good pre-bedtime routines (new blog coming soon on this).

Increase Fatloss

Leptin is a hormone that regulates appetite, which can be thrown off when you don’t get enough sleep. Maintaining a healthy eating schedule is key when trying to burn fat and sleeping is an unlikely, yet important part of that.

Sleep Makes You Alert

Feeling alert and ready is a great, and being alert will help you smash your daily workout too. If you’ve ever tried doing leg day after a bad nights sleep, you’ll know the feeling!

For exercise demonstrations, check out our FREE app (click the picture below) to view videos, pictures and exercise cues for over 250 exercises!

If you liked the blog, comment, share and subscribe to our mailing list on our website for more quality information every week.

D.N.A S&C

How To Beat Your Brain

The first month into your fitness journey is amazing. You smash the gym, you’re nutrition is on point and you’re more motivated than ever to not give up this time. Then the sorry day comes where the scale doesn’t change, you sleep in that one time or you let slip and all of a sudden your 6 donuts in and deep into a mental battle that you didn’t even see coming. Your brain can be your own worst enemy, so first of all, give yourself a pat on the back – your doing great! Here’s a few tips on how to keep pushing and not let your brain win!

Look back at your progress

We always recommend to track your progress somehow, whether that is taking progress pictures, taking anthropometrics (body fat %, circumferences etc) or writing down your weights for each workout. This is why; you can look back at these and remind yourself how far you’ve come. Even if the scale this week says that you’ve dropped 1lb, if you add that onto the other 5lb that you’ve lost, thats a great progression. Don’t underestimate the cumulative power of small differences and celebrate your successes, however small they may be. (A great subject to read up about is the Marginal Gains philosophy, this can translate really well into fitness).

Focus on your good points

Everyone has bits about them that they wish they could change! Even the top fitness models, athletes and celebrities have. The key to it is to celebrate your strengths and embrace your weaknessess. I would put money on the fact that someone, somewhere would kill to have some part of your body, so keep your chin up and be proud of yourself.

Make a plan

If you’re unhappy about something, the only way to get over that is to change it. This is done by assessing the problem and creating a solution. If you don’t like the extra belly fat you’re carrying, research into fitness training systems that boost your metabolism and maybe take a check on the diet to see if there’s anyway to clean it up a little bit. Often people don’t need to overhaul everything that they are doing. Minor changes can have a massive impact over long periods of time. If you’re really committed to having a healthier LIFESTYLE it’s important not to underestimate the impact they can have for long term success (marginal gains).

Don’t change too much too quickly

If you were doing a science experiment with 10-15 variables, would you change all 15 at once to measure a difference? The answer is probaby no, and it’s the same when it comes to fitness. If you change too much at once, you don’t know what factor is the catalyst for your progression. Change one thing at a time. This can be a training program, a new training system, trying out having a protein shake after your workout instead of before, getting an extra hour sleep, not looking at your phone before you go to bed…the list goes on. There’s so much that you CAN do to make a change. It can be overwhelming but if you break the problem down it becomes a hell of a lot clearer. Keep an eye out on the blog for a follow up post with an effective strategy for doing this in the near future.

Stick with what works until it doesnt work anymore

This links into the previous point. Lets take a very specific answer and say you increase your daily calorific intake my 200 Kcal as you’re trying to add lean mass. You notice this works for 4 weeks and then your progress slows up. It did work, now it doesn’t, so it’s time to change it up again, maybe another increase of 50 Kcal a day to see if that makes a difference. Give these things time to show their cards; if something seems to be making no measurable difference over 4-6 weeks, look to change it up, if its still working, keep doing it till it doesn’t work anymore. A good way of looking at it is to get the biggest possible yeild possible from the smallest possible exertion/change.

Remember, a strong oak doesn’t grow in a week, it takes years of adding rings! Imagine these rings are each week and each week gives you new opportunity to grow and achieve more.

So there you go, 5 quick tips on how to beat your brain. The key thing to take away is that any progress, however small or large is still progress.

P.S. Don’t believe everything you see on Instagram!

 

For exercise demonstrations, check out our FREE app (click the picture below) to view videos, pictures and exercise cues for over 250 exercises!

If you liked the blog, comment, share and subscribe to our mailing list on our website for more quality information every week.

D.N.A S&C