Exercise Highlight: The Cossack Squat The Cossack Squat is a form of a loaded stretch based movement that takes place in the frontal plane. Regularly training the Cossack Squat can help open up hip and ankle mobility while simultaneously strengthening the lower body potentially protecting against groin and hamstring strains. If you are unable to do a bodyweight version, try an assisted version by holding onto a suspension trainer or rack upright to assist with balance and off-load the bottom portion. Once the bodyweight movement is proficient, don't shy away from loading this movement. One of my favorite ways to load this is with a landmine. The anchored barbell adds an element of stability a can be biased for more core and upper back when held in the goblet position or posterior chain when held in the low position. I'll often use the combination of the Cossack and Curtsy Lunge as a part of my warm up for a lower body training session.

Happy Independence Day! . . . Enjoy, but don't ruin your Monday training session in the process ?

When building out a garage gym, you'll quickly realize that space may be a limiting factor as well as budget. If you are limited in either and cannot afford the space or finances to include a wide variety of machines and specialty training equipment in your garage, you'll learn to get creative with the equipment you do have. Here are a handful of my favorite for lower body and core go-to garage gym exercises that involve minimal equipment. 1️⃣ Band Zercher Goodmornings 2️⃣ Band Zercher Squat 3️⃣ & 4️⃣ Band Leg Curl (bilateral and unilateral) 5️⃣ Band Belt Squat Death March 6️⃣ Band Ab Pull-Ins

CAT is short for Compensatory Acceleration Training, not talking about feline potty training today. ? Introduced to the western world by the late, Fred Hatfield (AKA Dr. Squat), CAT in a nutshell describes lifting weights with a maximal intent on acceleration during the concentric phase. ? Through training with this maximal explosive intent, not only are you making the weight feel lighter, but you are training the mind and body to be explosive and move with intent, better preparing you to apply maximal force for heavier weights to come. Although utilizing CAT is generally recommended for anyone looking to improve their strength or power (with loads greater than 50%), it does have a drawback depending on the load being utilized. Naturally, our body will have a deceleration phase during the concentric in just about any traditional lift (with the exception of ballistics). The lighter the load, the greater velocity we can accelerate with. This also means we need a longer runway to be able to decelerate safely without projecting the weight from your hands or off of your back as well as protecting from injuring your joints.? Similar to a sprinter in a confined space, they will only be able to reach a certain speed if they know that they need to slow down before crashing into the wall at the end of the indoor track. ? One of the ways we can combat this deceleration window with our lighter loads is to add accommodative resistance such as bands or chains. These will act as our "crash wall" adding greater resistance as our leverages improve. Similar to stepping on the gas while pulling the e-brake on the highway, we can still emit force and have the intent to accelerate against this greater resistance. ? In short, if you are looking to get stronger or improve power, be explosive with your intent to accelerate through the concentric. Make note of the limitations of the specific loads being utilized (AKA time spent decelerating) and make sure your training addresses this gap with either training various aspects of the force-velocity curve and/or appropriately applying bands and/or chains to accommodate the strength curve when possible.

Greater Stability = Greater Force Output The nervous system is complex and it feels we've only scratched the surface on our level of understanding. What we do know is that safety is a primary concern and when it comes to movement, the more stable we perceive ourselves, the greater force output we are capable of producing. On the contrary, if we feel threatened through instability, the body will down-regulate the amount of force we can produce in the interest of safety or in seeking stability. If we want to optimize our strength training efforts, including some stimulation (not annihilation) work for the intrinsic stabilizers prior to the main training movement of the day, or KPI exercise, can pay dividends to unlocking pain-free performance. Here are a few of my favorites to include in a warm-up: Upper Body ? 1️⃣ KB Bottom's Up Press - intrinsically works the grip and rotator cuff 2️⃣ KB Windmill - great combination for shoulder and thoracic mobility and stability 3️⃣ Chaos Bench Press - Highly specific to the Bench Press, a common upper body KPI Lower Body ? 1️⃣ Hip Airplane - Single-leg balance as well as exploring go internal and external rotation in a close chain movement 2️⃣ Curtsy Lunge to Cossack - Frontal plane dominant with single leg balance and hip ROM 3️⃣ Single Leg RDL to Knee Drive - Single-leg balance in a hip-hinge pattern. Lifting the knee to 90+ degrees helps activate the grounded glute.

My entry for the #garagegymcompetition Squat: 600 Bench: 415 Deadlift: 625 Total: 1640 at 221 @garagegymcompetition does a great job putting together an all inclusive competition with great sponsors and prizes. Looking forward to next year's! Let's hope they bring back the classic raw division ?

What may be traditional training for a strongman competitor is often untraditional for just about everyone else. Utilizing strongman inspired movements can be of great value for the non-strongman athlete. Most strongman movements challenge strength in odd positions, grip like no other, and often paired with locomotion under load taxing work capacity. You would be hard pressed to find similar challenges with elsewhere. Not to mention they are also brutally satisfying to train! I've been incorporating strongman style accessories both done on the lighter side in conditioning circuits and heavily for strength or strength endurance. What I love about them is the movement variability each rep introduces. When training with dynamic load such as a sandbag, each rep tends to be slightly different than the previous. A tip of the hat to the strongman and strongwomen competitors out there!

Machines still get bad rap from many in the fitness industry. Just like a barbell, kettlebell, or dumbbell, machines are also tools of the trade and have a time and a place when utilized appropriately. Are they perfect? No, but neither is any one tool for the job. The less dogmatic we can be in our approach to training, the better. Our approach should be based on principles not tools. One of the unique characteristics of machines is the lack of the need for stability. With a fixed movement path and a seat designed to keep you even more stable, heavier loads can be used and pushed to the limit in a safer environment. They can serve as great accessory exercises in a week rounded program. One downside to machines is they are a fixed design and even with adjustments, they may not fit YOU well. For example, the start position on the Chest Press puts my shoulders into deeper extension than I'd like. One way to adjust for this is to add bands to the machine. This will lighten the bottom portion allowing me to start in a safer position while still challenging the movement with the increased tension during the press.

Dynamic Effort Contrast Training Power can be developed within a wide variety of intensities and in fact should be developed using different loads trained across the force-velocity curve with maximal intent. One of my favorite ways to train power is the use of contrast training in which two or more exercises that target different points on the force-velocity curve are trained in a circuit or superset. Here are two pairings I've recently used to develop power prioritizing hip extension. Speed Deadlift paired with Sandbag Toss Banded Speed Block Pulls paired with Weighted Box Jumps

⛓ DO YOU USE BANDS AND CHAINS?? ⛓⁠⁠ Mind out of the gutter, in the gym of course. ??‍♀️⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ ❌ While extremely common to see nowadays, it’s just as common to see the equipment misapplied, setup poorly or ineffectively or sometimes downright dangerously. ❌⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ ➡️ Swipe through these videos for some quick tutorials on how to set up bands and chains properly on a barbell, as well as how to measure the band tension weight you’ll experience as accurately as possible! (If you’re into that sort of thing ?)⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ ? Key takeaways: ⁠⁠ 1️⃣ Your chains should be grounded and set-up in a way that they mostly unload at the bottom. 2️⃣ Your bands should be placed near the collars as possible and not on the knurling, so the (especially unloaded) bar doesn’t flip during setup and you don't chew through your bands. 3️⃣ Measure band tension semi-regularly and stay consistent with your set ups to ensure consistent loading across training sessions.⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ ‼️Make sure to SAVE this post for your next band/chain setup, & SHARE IT with someone who might find it useful‼️⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ Be sure to check out the full length videos on YouTube. Link in bio. . . #subjectzero #clinicallydosed #sciencebacked #mentalfitness #sleepsupport #scienceiscool #sciencerules #powerliftingtraining #brainhealth #healthnut #metabolism #strengthcoach #onlinecoach #multivitamin #multivitamins #stability #accommodatingresistance #bandedsquats #liftingwithchains #powerliftinglife #rawpowerlifting #equilibrium #electrolytes #limitless #productivity #healthtips #stack #bandsandchains #resistancetraining