“Yo bro, check out my sweet quads!!”

Did you just say that? Are you obsessed with making your quads bigger? I bet you are, and to a certain extent so am I. But what we need to remember is that the quadriceps are not the whole story. Squats, deadlifts, cleans, jerks, snatches, cardio bs all use the anterior part of the leg; however you need to train the posterior to execute these lifts at full efficiency.

To use a great buzz phrase, the posterior chain is crucial for maximizing the force production of the leg and maintaining proper posture. Today I’ll focus on the hamstrings, why? Because my hammies are weak. To fix this I always end my workouts with some exercise that hammers my hammies. My personal favorite is the back extension machine. I’ll focus on keeping my back right while pulling through my heels as hard as I can. This usually results in a great burn, particularly when done for high reps with a 100lb dumbbell in hand.

Are your hammies weak? How do you train them? There are plenty of great hamstring exercises think about which one works best for you, post to comments if you care to share.

Would you build a building in a swamp? No. Why not? Becasue it’s squishy… and so are you. Don’t take that as an insult, I mean to say that in comparison to bedrock you are easily compressible. What does this have to do with lifting heavy things? Everything. In this post I’ll focus on how turning yourself into a granite slab will greatly improve your lifting.

When I first started pressing I never took my setup seriously. I would unrack the bar without taking a big breath and flexing my abs and upper back. Then, as I would begin to press, my body would compress lose all the hard work I was putting in to press the weight overhead. Why was I losing all this hard work? Because I did not have a solid surface to press against. As I was pressing the bar up, I was pressing my body down and moving it out of position. Energy was being lost everywhere in the connection between my main muscles and the bar.Because of the inefficiency in the transmission between my muscles and the bar, as well as the inefficiency caused by being in the wrong position to press I had to work extra hard to lift well under my potential.

How did I fix these errors? First off I learned to take a big breath and hold it before I unracked the bar. If I need to I can take another smaller breath before I start to lift. Secondly I learned to get my upper body very tight, again this is before I unrack the bar. The best way to do this is by thinking about pulling your shoulders back, and thinking about pulling your chest up and your ribcage down. The chest/ribcage cue can be hard to learn at first, but combined with the shoulders back it really locks the entire upperbody in place and provides the best platform for pressing.

The next, and possibly most important, technique that I have learned is to flex my legs really hard. Because your do not have to use your legs at all in the press this is the best way to provide your upper body with a solid platform to work on. Combined with the tightening of the upper body, flexing the legs can also help to engage the abs. All of these techniques will put you in the best position to press from and will keep you there throughout the entire movement.