NEED HELP WITH BURNING FAT?

📚 When the goal is losing fat, sleep is often overlooked. But if we look at the research, we see that your sleeping habits have a significant effect on your fat loss results.
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A 2010 study investigated the effects of sleep on body composition in people that maintain a moderate calorie deficit [1]. The researchers found that sleeping roughly 8 hours per day results in more fat loss and muscle preservation when compared to sleeping only about 5 hours per day.
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More recent research by Wang et al. supports that sleep restriction tends to negatively affect muscle preservation and fat loss while on a calorie-restricted diet [2]. So it's beneficial to take a good look at your sleeping habits if you are trying to lose fat while (at least) maintaining muscle.
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Now, this obviously doesn't mean you will directly lose muscle in a fat loss phase if you sleep less than 7 hours. But improving your sleeping habits is one of the low-hanging fruits when it comes to enhancing your overall fitness results.
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References:
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951287/
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29438540 ...

💪🏼Biceps curls are often performed with a supinated or neutral (hammer) grip. But what is the difference between the two variations? I answered this question in my most recent YouTube video and will give a quick recap in this post!
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The biceps is a 2-headed muscle that flexes the elbow and supinates your wrists. So if you perform bicep curls with a supinated-grip, you will target the 2 heads of the biceps effectively. But underneath the biceps, there is also another muscle, your brachialis. The brachialis lies under the long head of your biceps. Because of its position under the bicep, developing the brachialis helps improve the appearance of your arms from the side.
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The brachialis mainly flexes the elbow but does not assist in wrist supination. This helps explain why one study found that doing bicep curls with a neutral (like with hammer curls) or reverse (like reverse-grip curls) helps with activating the brachialis muscle more [1]. You'll also find your forearm muscle engaging more with a hammer-grip.
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So incorporating bicep exercises in which you have different wrist positions is beneficial for improving upper arm development. Personally, I like to include a Supinated Dumbbell Bicep Curl + Hammer or Reverse-Grip Curl in my training week to train multiple areas of the upper arm.
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Reference:
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7570586
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🦾First things first, your training sessions should be challenging if you want to develop muscle. If you do not challenge yourself in training, your muscles won't have a reason to adapt and grow. And it is normal if in your training journey you experience some soreness and sometimes feel more fatigued. But this doesn't mean that we should actively pursue "exhaustion" in every workout.
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Sweating more or feeling more sore doesn't produce progress. Progressive overload produces progress. Challenging your muscles beyond their present capacity by consistently improving your workout performance will be responsible for muscle and strength development. Purposely making yourself sweat a lot in a training session or changing your workouts to make yourself feel very sore the next day isn't necessarily helpful [1].
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If you swipe left and check the 2nd slide, you can find 2 common mistakes people often make in training. The first one is doing cardio in between your sets of lifting weights. Now, if your goal is improving muscular endurance, this is fine. But if developing/maintaining muscle while losing fat is the goal, this is counterproductive. The additional cardio will fatigue you for your working sets, resulting in less effective strength training. If you want to do cardio for more calorie-burn, do it after or outside of your training [2].
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Also, having very short rest periods to feel your muscles "burn" more typically does more harm than good. Research consistently shows that shorter rest periods compromise your performance and training volume, resulting in less muscle and strength gain [3, 4].
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Moral of the story: If your goal is developing muscle and strength, don't focus on "fatiguing" yourself in training. But focus on progressively overloading your lifts.
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References:
1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21270317/
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27863207/
3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26605807
4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19077743/ ...

🏋‍♂️ The overhead press is an effective shoulder exercise. If you struggle with overhead press technique, this post is for you. I will discuss 4 overhead press tips. Swipe left for more.
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The first tip is about preventing an excessively curved back while doing the overhead press. Curving your back is a common reason of low-back pain during the overhead press. Squeeze your glutes to keep the pelvis tucked, this will also result in you pressing up from a more stable base.
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It is also common for people to press the barbell around their heads. If the bar moves in front of your body and then back, your bar path is inefficient. During the overhead press, aim to press the bar straight mostly straight. The bar has to travel less distance, resulting in you being able to lift more weight.
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The next form correction is about grip-width. You want your forearms to be vertical at the bottom of a shoulder press to maximize strength potential. Having a wide-grip increases results in an efficient press. So place your hands over your elbows at the start of the overhead press. An exception for this tip is if you use a wider grip on the overhead press to train certain olympic lifts (e.g. the snatch).
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Lastly, you don't have to start with the overhead press if you find the form difficult. You can also start with a more simple variation like seated dumbbell shoulder pressing. Then progress towards standing dumbbell shoulder pressing and once you build up some basic pressing strength, transition to the barbell overhead press.
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🍠Let's talk about carbs and muscle growth!
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Low-carb diets have increased in popularity over the past few years. We now know low-carb diets are similarly effective as high-carb diets for fat loss when calories and protein are matched [1]. But what about muscle growth? Multiple recent studies investigating ketogenic diets while lifting weights found that keto diets are less effective for gaining muscle than high-carb diets [2, 3]. The studies were performed on relatively lean athletes.
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These findings may have to do with the fact that high-carb diets involve greater insulin stimulation, which plays a role in muscle growth [4]. But what also plays a role is that it's just harder to consume enough calories for optimal muscle growth on a keto diet. The participants in the mentioned studies (references 2 & 3) ended up consuming fewer calories when they followed a keto diet, likely because keto has mild appetite-suppressing effects [5].
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Considering this and the fact that carbohydrates help fuel resistance training performance [6], a low-carb diet is probably not optimal for maximizing muscle growth. For a general carbohydrate guideline, check the last slide of this post.
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With that said, I think there's nothing wrong with experimenting with a low-carb diet if you haven't yet. But I suggest you do this while trying to lose fat. The appetite-suppressing effects of a low-carb diet may help with creating a calorie deficit.
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References:
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/28193517/
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5969192/
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29986720
4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899900718309535
5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23632752
6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21660839 ...

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Do you need front raises in your training?
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If your front deltoids are a weak point and you'd like to train them with more volume, a front raise is fine to include in your workouts. But for most people, the front deltoids will be trained sufficiently with your upper body push exercises. Especially if we look into shoulder press and incline chest press variations, we see that the front deltoids are quite dominant during many push exercises [1-3].
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With other movements like a chest fly and dips, your front deltoids also get a good amount of stimulation. Not to mention that our everyday lives tend to be quite "front-dominant". It is common for people to develop a rounded forward posture because of having overpowered muscles on the front side of the upper body.
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For all these reasons, most people don't need front raises to have well-developed front deltoids. The push exercises in your workouts will cover the front delts and you can focus more on the side and rear deltoids with the shoulder isolation exercises you do. But again, eventually, it depends on your individual training goals whether front deltoids are useful in your training or not.
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References:
1. Saeterbakken, A. H., & Fimland, M. S. (2013). Effects of body position and loading modality on muscle activity and strength in shoulder presses. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 27(7), 1824-1831.
2. Lauver, J. D., Cayot, T. E., & Scheuermann, B. W. (2016). Influence of bench angle on upper extremity muscular activation during bench press exercise. European journal of sport science, 16(3), 309-316.
3. Campos, Yuri AC, et al. "Different shoulder exercises affect the activation of deltoid portions in resistance-trained individuals."
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