Launchpad: Lifting the Question Immediately Ask five people whether weight lifting is a high-impact exercise, and you’ll often get varied answers—some assume that moving heavy weight must mean high impact, while others refer to it as joint-friendly resistance training. To settle this, we need to strip away assumptions and focus on the science of exercise…
Turbocharge Your Gains from Day One When it comes to building strength, muscle size, and long-term physical resilience, the fastest way to see results is to focus on proven, science-backed exercises that recruit multiple muscle groups at once. As a coach who’s spent years both studying hypertrophy and grinding through thousands of training hours, I…
Pumped Up PSA? Your Top Question Answered One of the most common questions I get from male athletes and fitness enthusiasts is: “Coach, can my training mess with my PSA test?” PSA, or Prostate-Specific Antigen, is a key biomarker for prostate health—used in screenings for conditions like benign prostatic hyperplasia, prostatitis, and prostate cancer. Elevated…
First Reps: Your Calorie Burn Answer Right off the Barbell Weight lifting is more than just building strength and muscle mass—it’s also a legitimate tool for calorie expenditure. On average, a typical weight lifting workout can burn anywhere from 200 to 600 calories per hour. If you’re training for 30 minutes, expect that number to…
Lift Off: How to Find Your Starting Weight in a Snap Finding your starting weight in weightlifting is part art, part science—it’s about balancing challenge with safety. The right load should allow you to complete your prescribed repetitions with proper form while still feeling like you’ve worked. Start too heavy, and your technique will crumble;…
Don’t Worry, Yes – Weight Lifting Can Cause Bruising Weight lifting, whether you’re pushing through heavy squats, grinding out deadlifts, or performing high-intensity resistance training, places significant mechanical stress on your muscles, connective tissue, and blood vessels. In some cases, that stress can cause visible bruising—discolorations you might notice as red, purple, or black-and-blue marks…
Crack the Code: Safe Lifting with Tennis Elbow Tennis elbow, or lateral epicondylitis, is a frustrating condition that can derail your training if not handled with precision. It involves microscopic tears and inflammation in the tendons that attach to the outside of your elbow, often aggravated by repetitive gripping and wrist extension patterns. For lifters,…
Instant Calculation: Discover Your Ideal Lift A weight lifting calculator is your shortcut to finding the right training load without the risk of attempting a true max lift. By inputting the number of reps you perform with a given weight, the calculator estimates your one-rep max (1RM)—the most weight you could lift for a single…
Jumpstart Your Strength Journey Whether you’re building a home gym or upgrading commercial gym equipment, the right tools are the foundation of effective training. Investing in well-built strength training equipment isn’t just about lifting heavier—it’s about safety, performance, and long-term progression. The market includes everything from barbells and dumbbells to weight machines and cable machines….
Always Count the Bar: The Non‑Negotiable Rule Walk into most gyms and you’ll see “identical” bars that secretly range from 33–55 lb. If you don’t count the bar, every log you keep and every PR you claim is off. Your total isn’t just plates—it’s bar + collars + plates. Count it every time or your…