TrainAtHomeGuru.com

This post was originally published on fxbros.com and was adapted for TrainAtHomeGuru.com.

When my brother and I started blogging some 3 years ago, it was for me a way to share stuff related to health and training. Strength training is a passion and since we started [more] seriously in 2000, I’ve always enjoyed researching and experimenting in this field.

For years I’ve stepped on the personal scale and log my body weight in my training log. When I got the habit of calculating my fat percentage, I then started a spreadsheet to keep the data and have basic formulas automation. At some point, I got this great idea to build a web application that would allow me to automate even more the process. And why not offer this application to everybody?

The project of building a web application, available for anybody wanting to follow their body weight online, was born.

Then, I was looking for a name. After giving it some thoughts, I made a link with “Key Performance Indicators”, used in the financial world. But I mixed the order of the letters by mistake and I end up with Body Key Indicators or BKI.

I went further a little… I was also looking for a tagline. I don’t exactly remember how I made it, but the “I, in my body” was there. And where this is becoming funny is if I take “BKI” and “I in”, mix them together, I end up with “bikini” (BiKinI)!

The last thing about bathing suit is more a joke than anything. I never tried to use it. Should I?

I will explained how I made the logo in a next post.

Finally, please note that the web application is still just a project… Hopefully, we’ll find some time to build it!

Until next post, Lift Consciously

With negative or eccentric work, I can go beyond failure to stimulate even more muscular growth.

The negative part of an exercise is the lowering motion. For example, the negative part of chin-up is lowering the body.

There are 3 phases to muscular failure:

1. The positive or concentric state, which is the lift itself,
2. The holding or isometric state,
3. And the negative.

The negative being the strongest state.

When I do an exercise, I will reach muscular failure on the positive first, then I can hold the weight for a moment and finally, I can still lower the weight slowly. With my chin-up example, I may perform 7 full reps, fail on the 8th, hold myself where I failed for some time and then fight gravity slowly. That way of training is what Stuart McRobert calls “brutally hard” training (Beyond Brawn book).

I use negative work on 2 exercises: dip and chin-up.

Currently, the way I train is to add a full set of only negatives after I reach positive failure. For example, again with my chin-up case, I do a set of 8 reps (target is 8 reps, but I will continue until I fail, so between 7-12 reps) and after a short pause, I repeat the same exercise, but only negative work (I use a step stool to reach arm extension).

After training like this for awhile, I feel a bit exhausted. I think that it is too much work and even if I use an abbreviated routine, I might be in an over-training state.

The change I want to introduce in my training is to remove the set of negative. I will just finish my sets with holding and negative on my last, to-failure rep. I will see if this helps me recover…

Until next post, Lift Consciously

The main reason I train to failure is because when I fail doing a lift, I know I’m done.

This reason alone is, for me, more than enough to use this approach. It is very natural and almost a no-brainer. I don’t have to ask myself “should I do more?”. Or stop at some arbitrary moment, such as “3 sets of 10 reps per body part”.

I have other reasons why I train to failure. With this method:

• Workouts are short (around half an hour)
• And for recovery needs, infrequent (twice per week).

This is perfect because, like anybody, I simply have no time for anything but work and taking care of the little family.

I don’t train to failure on all of my exercises, though. The exceptions are legs exercices, where the poundage is high and dropping the bar can be dangerous or could damage my home gym floor. The other exception is flat bench dumbbell fly, where I would probably get injured because I train alone. So nobody can spot me for that last lift I won’t complete.

With a training to failure approach, I was also able to remove exercices that are just incompatible with it. In the end, I removed many single muscle exercises and I kept only compound exercises, such as deadlift, dip, chin (pull-up).

But training to failure is not easy. The last rep, the lift where the fail occurs, is very demanding mentally. I have to have a clear mind in the gym, otherwise I will under perform.

Finally, training to failure is safe for me. After years of properly using this method, I never got injured during a workout.

Until next post, Lift Consciously