All Posts

The coaching level is exceptionally high and beginner-friendly, resembling personalized guidance from a trainer rather than a generic template. It's comprehensive, detailed, and proactive, with cues integrated directly into workout tables and notes sections.

Scraped or bloody shins are not a badge of honor. They usually come from an inefficient setup that forces the bar to travel around obstacles instead of through your center of mass. The Deadlift is all about positions and this article will give you some options to try if you find yourself scraping your shins. Personally I don't think the bar should be touching your shins at all.

Splice sets are a practical form of autoregulation for Low Rep Hypertrophy Sets. The idea is simple: when a planned set scheme begins to break down during a session, you change the reps per set so you can still hit the prescribed total reps while managing fatigue and preserving motor quality. This is a tool for lifters who prioritize maximizing total tonnage on a given day and want a sensible way and best of all avoid just taking weight off the bar.

Give yourself a deadline. Whether you want to finish a marathon, hit a new deadlift PR, place at a powerlifting meet, or peak for a season, a date turns goals into a plan. Below is a practical, step-by-step approach to build a training timeline you can actually follow, with examples you can apply to sports, strength goals, or endurance events.

Warming up is far more important than most people give it credit for — and the word warm-up itself sells the process short. I prefer to call them prep sets. Prep sets are intentional steps to recruit motor units and prepare the nervous system for high-output, low-rep hypertrophy work. When done correctly, they make your working sets feel lighter, improve motor recruitment, and let you sustain high-quality effort across multiple heavy sets.

How do you know when an exercise is truly done? What makes the last set the last set? Instead of leaving that decision to chance or to crushing yourself until nothing is left, plan the ending. A smart ending both creates opportunities to push past previous limits and manages fatigue so you can keep progressing long term.

People talk about hypertrophy like it lives inside an 8–12 rep box. I don’t know where that number came from, but it’s not the answer, it's not even the question. Hypertrophy isn’t driven by a magic rep range. It comes down to two things: mechanical tension and motor unit recruitment. Everything else is a strategy to manipulate those two drivers.

Track and visualize your progress. You can use this as an individual and you can ESPECIALLY use this for teams or groups if you are a coach. There's a huge perk for any coach that uses Train Heroic which I show you in this video. Makes data entry extremely easy. The goal was to make a very user friendly and easy to use tracker.

Low rep hypertrophy sets flip the traditional bodybuilding prescription on its head. Instead of 1-3 sets of 8-12 reps, you do 8-12 sets of 1-3 reps. The total number of reps is the same, but you're lifting MUCH heavier weight and the focus shifts to producing maximal force (great of motor recruitment and mechanical tension).

This is easily the most common question anytime I write or post about low rep hypertrophy sets. "How long do you rest between sets?" Or my favorite is when people who don't use this method and know nothing about it tell me it takes too long. It doesn't take long at all and I'm here to explain the science and the logic behind it. The rest and total times to complete will absolutely surprise you.

You can build muscle with low reps. You can especially do it with barbells. The trick is not more reps, it is smarter reps. Low-rep, heavy sets on compound free-weight lifts can be an excellent path to hypertrophy when you know how to pick the weight and structure the work. This approach focuses on three things: recruiting as many motor units as possible, managing fatigue so you can recover session to session, and accumulating true hypertrophy sets — not just grinding through

We are starting a Lift the Weights Team in 2026!

Kettlebell arm bars are a deceptively simple-looking shoulder stability tool. They teach control through the shoulder, challenge grip strength, and make an excellent warm-up or rehab exercise before bench pressing or overhead pressing. There are a few common variations, and a few small technical details that separate a safe, useful rep from a sloppy one that creates more problems than it fixes.

This is one of the toughest exercises to learn. You can even look like you're doing it right and still not have it completely down. It's all in the hips. Sometimes you just need some internal and external cuing to help you get there. Here are 3 exercises I learned and used from the performance world to teach hundreds of people how to master the RDL.

Don't ever let equipment limit your training. Most people aren't training heavy enough with dumbbells so when they switch to one of my programs it's not uncommon to come across this issue where you run out of DB weight. Not to worry, I've solved this problem myself in a couple different ways. I will share my tips and tricks below

What is a secondary exercise? What is an accessory? Again, questions that no one asks and it seems like a topic many aren't interested in being wrong in. I remember distinctly a time over 10 years ago I went through a phase where I purposefully tried to "unlearn" everything I had been taught in school. I truly belief school taught me what to think, but not how to think. This is something I conquered on my own and I wish to share these thoughts below.

I have some unique views on using percentages in training. It feels like the coaches that use percentages the most are the same coaches that don't lift. If they did they would understand how frustrating percetages can be and why there must be alternative ways to dictate how much weight to use. How much weight should you use? I have absolutely no idea, that's for you to decide. Read below how I like to navigate this dilemma.

Just add 5 pounds each week. I wish it were that simple. The body doesn't adapt in a straight line fashion. It adapts in a non linear fashion, often full of ups and downs. I've always held the unpopular belief that you should skip the linear progression phase and jump right into the non linear progressions which have a much longer runway. Even coaches pro linear progressions will agree with that. Below I share my thoughts on the topic and I offer how I like to program for beg

Most people start training and never make any drastic changes. I'm here to tell you, you should absolutely explore different training methodologies and ideas. Why train for years without at least giving alternative methods a thought? This was with out a doubt part of how I was able to come across the most impactful change I ever made to drastically improve my physique.

The pump washes off in the shower. I will teach you how I program low rep sets for hypertrophy. It's not mainstream...yet but it will be because the results are insane.