The 10 Manliest Exercises

by Bret Contreras

Bret Contreras has no family, no friends—not even a pet goldfish. There's just no time, because all he wants to do is figure out which exercises give you the most bang for your buck. Okay, we're exaggerating. He has an imaginary friend named Stuey. But we're not kidding about the other part. He simply wants to know which exercises build the most muscle. He's even spent countless hour with electrodes attached to his muscles in an attempt to figure out which movements spur the most electrical activity, so when he lists the 10 Manliest Exercises, you'd best pay attention.

I've spent a lot of time in commercial gyms over the years. I can say with absolute certainty that 99% of what I've seen was unimpressive. Most people simply don't train hard and don't perform the best exercises.
However, there have been rare times where I waltzed into the gym to find some throwback from the caveman era performing a challenging exercise with a ton of weight and intensity. I've found myself on several occasions saying to my workout partner, "That dude is a serious badass!"
Just how does one go about getting labeled a badass in the strength training world? Obviously you have to get strong. No matter how cool the exercise looks, nobody gives a shit if you're snatching 65 lbs.
You also need to have good form. This usually comes from good core stability induced from heavy lifting with good form over the years. Even if you use a ton of weight, nobody cares if you perform a wobbly, energy-leaking squat that doesn't resemble anything athletic. Finally, you need to be performing badass exercises. Without further ado, here are the ten manliest exercises:

1. Chain Dips

Branch Warren popularized chain dips. He'd drape a couple pairs of heavy chains over his shoulders and start busting out sets of high rep dips. It looks and feels really cool to have chains draped around your body, sort of like Mr. T. This exercise works a ton of neck extensor musculature while also hammering the pecs, front delts, and triceps.

2. Zercher Squats

You don't hear much about the Zercher squat these days. Most people hate doing them because they hurt like hell. Holding a heavy barbell in the crux of your arms is one of the most painful things you'll ever do. However, the placement of the barbell increases the load on the core and glute musculature, in addition to hitting the quads, hams, and calves, which makes it an extremely effective exercise. So try to deal with the pain; eventually your body gets used to it.

3. Clean and Press

I don't care what anyone says, if you can bust out a 225 lb clean and press, then you are pretty badass. That's just all there is to it. This exercise works the hell out of the traps, delts, and triceps. Get to 315 lbs and you've now reached Lattimer status from the 1993 movie, The Program.

4. T-Bar Row Strip Sets

I once saw some beasts in the gym doing these and was enamored. They started off with six 45-lb plates and did five reps. A partner would strip a plate off and the lifter would get five more reps. This would continue until there was only one plate left on the bar, so the lifter would execute a total of 30 reps. This exercise works the lats, scapulae retractors, and biceps, as well as working the entire posterior chain isometrically. Two words: freaking brutal!

5. 20-Rep Breathing Squats

One set of squats can't be that bad, right? Wrong! If you don't know about 20-rep breathing squats, then read up on them as these bad-boys have been around forever. They might just be the hardest single exercise known to man. You take your 10RM and get 20 reps by "resting" in the top position and taking deep breaths. A set can last anywhere from three to ten minutes. If your quad growth has been stagnant for a while, focus on these for around six weeks and you won't be disappointed.  

6. Parking Lot Lunges

Ronnie Coleman popularized these years ago when he'd walk outside Metroflex gym and start lunging up and down the parking lot with 185 lbs on his back in the blazing Texas heat. The parking lot lunge will hammer your quads and glutes. To Ronnie, this "ain't nuttin' but a peanut."

7. Kroc Rows

Matt Kroczaleski popularized these explosive high-rep one-arm rows with the heaviest dumbbells your gym carries. Essentially, they're heavy, high rep, one-arm rows with a little bit of English. In Kroc's words, they're Òwhatever dumbbell you think you can't do for one rep x 50.Ó
He credits these for packing on slabs of lat mass and increasing his deadlift strength. In addition to working the lats, scapulae retractors, and biceps, Kroc rows work a ton of core as well. If you do them right, one set is all you need!

8. Deadlifts

If you've seen video clips of Konstantin Konstantinovs busting out various types of deadlifts, then you understand how badass deadlifts can be once you get strong. Many would argue that the deadlift is the most functional exercise of all, as it annihilates the entire posterior chain in addition to working the quads too. Even the name "deadlift" reeks of manliness.

9. Heavy Yolk or Farmer's Walks

You don't see many people doing yolk walks and farmer's walks these days because most gyms don't carry the implements. Even if they did, there usually isn't any room to do them anyway. However, if you have a garage gym or belong to a rare gym that allows you to perform heavy walks, consider yourself lucky.
These exercises are unbelievable total body strengtheners. In fact, spinal researcher Stuart McGill found evidence that the super yolk walk might just be the most challenging exercise for the spine due to the extreme load of the implement and the core muscle contractions required to stabilize the spine and hips. You don't need a yolk to do a yolk walk; a barbell works just fine, and heavy dumbbells or a hex bar can be used for farmer's walks.

10. Bench Press

There's no reason to hate on the bench press. It's the most popular exercise in the world because every guy wants a nice set of pecs. But powerlifters realized long ago that if you bench press in a certain manner, it's a total-body exercise. They figured out how to use their lats and legs in addition to their triceps, shoulders, and pecs in order to maximize the weight they could press.
Learn how to bench like a powerlifter and keep a strong low back arch, pull the bar down lower on your chest, and get some good leg drive. Everybody is impressed with a strong ass bench press.

In all honesty, this list could go on and on and on, as there are plenty of manly exercises. Any variation of the lifts you find in Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, and strongman training is pretty damn manly. There are plenty of badass bodyweight exercises you can do as well...for instance the muscle up and pistol.
Honorable mentions go to the cambered bar good morning and weighted chin up. And it's always fun swinging sledgehammers and pushing trucks around. When you're super strong, everything looks manly...a Turkish get up, a one-arm snatch, a barbell curl, and even an explosive landmine.
The point of this article is to illustrate that the manliest exercises are performed with heavy free weights and are usually performed on your feet. If all your training is done on machines, while lying down, or with pink dumbbells, then you probably aren't getting the most out of your routine. In the words of King Ronnie: "Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but nobody wanna lift no heavy ass weight!"

Bret Contreras received his master's degree from Arizona State University and his Certified Strength and Conditioning Certificate from the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Bret trains himself and others out of his kickass garage gym and has a popular blog here. Check it out!

Take that stupid gold chain off you neck and use something like this.

Konstantin and deadlifts equal manliness.

T-bar rows, old school.

© 1998 — 2010 Testosterone, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Wikio

Exercise Upgrades for More Muscle

What You're Doing Wrong

Lunge

You're leaning forward, causing your front heel to rise.

Perfect Your Form
1. "When you lunge, keep your torso upright, and focus on moving it up and down, not backward and forward," says Rasmussen. This will keep your weight balanced evenly through your front foot, allowing you to press hard into the floor with your heel—and target more muscle.

2. "Drop your back knee straight down to the floor," says Boyle. Consider this a second strategy to help you remember that you should drop your torso down, not push it forward, as you do the exercise.

3. "To work your core harder, narrow your starting stance," says Gray Cook, M.S.P.T., the author of Athletic Body in Balance. The smaller the gap between your feet, the more your core has to work to stabilize your body. Your goal: Lunge so that it's almost like you're walking on a tightrope as you perform the exercise.

Rows and Pullups

What You're Doing Wrong
You're ignoring the muscles that retract your shoulder blades.

Perfect Your Form
1. "When doing bent-over and seated rows, and any pullup variation, create as much space between your ears and shoulders as you can," says Rasmussen. Pull your shoulders down and back and hold them that way as you do the exercise. This ensures you're working the intended middle-and upper-back muscles.

2. "As you row the weight, stick your chest out," says Mike Boyle, M.A., A.T.C., owner of Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning, in Winchester and North Andover, Massachusetts. This allows you to better retract your shoulder blades, which will lead to better results.

3. "Imagine there's an orange between your shoulder blades," says Grantham. "Then try to squeeze the juice out of it with your shoulder blades as you pull the weight or your body up."

Straight-Leg Deadlift

What You're Doing Wrong
You're rounding your lower back as you bend over.

Perfect Your Form
1. "To lower the weight, pretend you're holding a tray of drinks and need to close the door behind you with your butt," says Cosgrove. This cues you to bend over by pushing your hips back instead of rounding your lower back—a form blunder that puts you at risk for back problems.

2. "Try to 'shave your legs' with the bar," says Weiss. The reason: Every degree the bar is away from your body places more strain on your back, which increases your chance of injury and limits the emphasis on your hamstrings and glutes.

3. "As you lift the bar, squeeze your glutes like two fists," says Nick Grantham, a top strength and conditioning coach in the U.K. and the owner of Smart Fitness. You'll ensure that you're engaging your butt muscles. This helps you generate more power, lift more weight, and produce better results

Squat

What You're Doing Wrong
You're starting the movement by bending your knees.

Perfect Your Form
1. "Sit back between your legs, not on top of your knees," says Dan John, a strength coach based in Draper, Utah. Start your squats by pushing your hips back. "Most men tend to bend their knees first, which puts more stress on their joints."

2. "When you squat, imagine you're standing on a paper towel," says Charlie Weingroff, director of sports performance and physical therapy for CentraState Sports Performance, in Monroe, New Jersey. "Then try to rip the towel apart by pressing your feet hard into the floor and outward." This activates your glutes, which helps you use heavier weights.

3. "Instead of raising your body, think about pushing the floor away from your body," says Alwyn Cosgrove, C.S.C.S., co-owner of Results Fitness. "This helps you better engage the muscles in your legs."

Bench Press

What You're Doing Wrong
You're thinking only about pushing the bar up from your chest.

Perfect Your Form
1. "Every time you lower the weight, squeeze your shoulder blades together and pull the bar to your chest," says Craig Rasmussen, C.S.C.S., a fitness coach at Results Fitness in Santa Clarita, California. This will help you build up energy in your upper body so that you can press the bar up with more force.

2. "As you pull the weight down, lift your chest to meet the barbell," Rasmussen says. "This will aid your efforts to create a springlike effect when you start to push the bar back up."

3. "When you press the weight, try to bend the bar with your hands," says Pavel Tsatsouline, a fitness expert and the author of Enter the Kettlebell! The benefit: You'll activate more muscle fibers in your lats and move the bar in a stronger and safer path for your shoulders.

Pushup

What You're Doing Wrong
You're letting your hips sag as you raise and lower your body.

Perfect Your Form
1. "When you're in a pushup position, your posture should look the same as it would if you were standing up straight and tall," says Vern Gambetta, the owner of Gambetta Sports Training Systems, in Sarasota, Florida. "So your hips shouldn't sag or be hiked, and your upper back shouldn't be rounded."

2. "Before you start, contract and stiffen your core the way you would if you had to zip up a really tight jacket," says Kaitlyn Weiss, a NASM-certified trainer based in Southern California. Hold it that way for the duration of your set. "This helps your body remain rigid—with perfect posture—as you perform the exercise."

3. "Don't just push your body up; push your hands through the floor," Gambetta says. You'll generate more power with every repetition.

By: Rachel Cosgrove, C.S.C.S

Wikio

Phys Ed: Your Brain on Exercise

JULY 7, 2010, 12:01 AM

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

Jim Wehtje/Getty Images

What goes on inside your brain when you exercise? That question has preoccupied a growing number of scientists in recent years, as well as many of us who exercise. In the late 1990s, Dr. Fred Gage and his colleagues at the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute in San Diego elegantly proved that human and animal brains produce new brain cells (a process called neurogenesis) and that exercise increases neurogenesis. The brains of mice and rats that were allowed to run on wheels pulsed with vigorous, newly born neurons, and those animals then breezed through mazes and other tests of rodent I.Q., showing that neurogenesis improves thinking.

But how, exactly, exercise affects the staggeringly intricate workings of the brain at a cellular level has remained largely mysterious. A number of new studies, though, including work published this month by Mr. Gage and his colleagues, have begun to tease out the specific mechanisms and, in the process, raised new questions about just how exercise remolds the brain.

Some of the most reverberant recent studies were performed at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. There, scientists have been manipulating the levels of bone-morphogenetic protein or BMP in the brains of laboratory mice. BMP, which is found in tissues throughout the body, affects cellular development in various ways, some of them deleterious. In the brain, BMP has been found to contribute to the control of stem cell divisions. Your brain, you will be pleased to learn, is packed with adult stem cells, which, given the right impetus, divide and differentiate into either additional stem cells or baby neurons. As we age, these stem cells tend to become less responsive. They don’t divide as readily and can slump into a kind of cellular sleep. It’s BMP that acts as the soporific, says Dr. Jack Kessler, the chairman of neurology at Northwestern and senior author of many of the recent studies. The more active BMP and its various signals are in your brain, the more inactive your stem cells become and the less neurogenesis you undergo. Your brain grows slower, less nimble, older.

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But exercise countermands some of the numbing effects of BMP, Dr. Kessler says. In work at his lab, mice given access to running wheels had about 50 percent less BMP-related brain activity within a week. They also showed a notable increase in Noggin, a beautifully named brain protein that acts as a BMP antagonist. The more Noggin in your brain, the less BMP activity exists and the more stem cell divisions and neurogenesis you experience. Mice at Northwestern whose brains were infused directly with large doses of Noggin became, Dr. Kessler says, “little mouse geniuses, if there is such a thing.” They aced the mazes and other tests.

Whether exercise directly reduces BMP activity or increases production of Noggin isn’t yet known and may not matter. The results speak for themselves. “If ever exercise enthusiasts wanted a rationale for what they’re doing, this should be it,” Dr. Kessler says. Exercise, he says, through a complex interplay with Noggin and BMP, helps to ensure that neuronal stem cells stay lively and new brain cells are born.

But there are caveats and questions remaining, as the newest experiment from Dr. Gage’s lab makes clear. In that study, published in the most recent issue of Cell Stem Cell, BMP signaling was found to be playing a surprising, protective role for the brain’s stem cells. For the experiment, stem cells from mouse brains were transferred to petri dishes and infused with large doses of Noggin, hindering BMP activity. Without BMP signals to inhibit them, the stem cells began dividing rapidly, producing hordes of new neurons. But over time, they seemed unable to stop, dividing and dividing again until they effectively wore themselves out. The same reaction occurred within the brains of living (unexercised) mice given large doses of Noggin. Neurogenesis ramped way up, then, after several weeks, sputtered and slowed.  The “pool of active stem cells was depleted,” a news release accompanying the study reported. An overabundance of Noggin seemed to cause stem cells to wear themselves out, threatening their ability to make additional neurons in the future.

This finding raises the obvious and disturbing question: can you overdose on Noggin by, for instance, running for hours, amping up your production of the protein throughout? The answer, Dr. Gage says, is, almost certainly, no. “Many people have been looking into” that issue, he says. But so far, “there has not been any instance of a negative effect from voluntary running” on the brain health of mice. Instead, he says, it seems that the effects of exercise are constrained and soon plateau, causing enough change in the activity of Noggin and BMP to shake slumbering adult stem cells awake, but not enough to goose them into exhausting themselves.

Still, if there’s not yet any discernible ceiling on brain-healthy exercise, there is a floor. You have to do something. Walk, jog, swim, pedal — the exact amount or intensity of the exercise required has not been determined, although it appears that the minimum is blessedly low. In mice, Mr. Gage says, “even a fairly short period” of exercise “and a short distance seems to produce results.”

Wikio

Study: 10 minutes of exercise, hour-long effects

By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer
Tue Jun 1, 3:04 am ET

WASHINGTON – Ten minutes of brisk exercise triggers metabolic changes that last at least an hour. The unfair news for panting newbies: The more fit you are, the more benefits you just might be getting.
We all know that exercise and a good diet are important for health, protecting against heart disease and diabetes, among other conditions. But what exactly causes the health improvement from working up a sweat or from eating, say, more olive oil than saturated fat? And are some people biologically predisposed to get more benefit than others?
They're among questions that metabolic profiling, a new field called metabolomics, aims to answer in hopes of one day optimizing those benefits — or finding patterns that may signal risk for disease and new ways to treat it.
"We're only beginning to catalog the metabolic variability between people," says Dr. Robert Gerszten of Massachusetts General Hospital, whose team just took a step toward that goal.
The researchers measured biochemical changes in the blood of a variety of people: the healthy middle-aged, some who became short of breath with exertion, and marathon runners.
First, in 70 healthy people put on a treadmill, the team found more than 20 metabolites that change during exercise, naturally produced compounds involved in burning calories and fat and improving blood-sugar control. Some weren't known until now to be involved with exercise. Some revved up during exercise, like those involved in processing fat. Others involved with cellular stress decreased with exercise.
Those are pretty wonky findings, a first step in a complex field. But they back today's health advice that even brief bouts of activity are good.
"Ten minutes of exercise has at least an hour of effects on your body," says Gerszten, who found some of the metabolic changes that began after 10 minutes on the treadmill still were measurable 60 minutes after people cooled down.
Your heart rate rapidly drops back to normal when you quit moving, usually in 10 minutes or so. So finding lingering biochemical changes offers what Gerszten calls "tantalizing evidence" of how exercise may be building up longer-term benefits.
Back to the blood. Thinner people had greater increases in a metabolite named niacinamide, a nutrient byproduct that's involved in blood-sugar control, the team from Mass General and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard reported last week in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Checking a metabolite of fat breakdown, the team found people who were more fit — as measured by oxygen intake during exercise — appeared to be burning more fat than the less fit, or than people with shortness of breath, a possible symptom of heart disease.
The extremely fit — 25 Boston Marathon runners — had ten-fold increases in that metabolite after the race. Still other differences in metabolites allowed the researchers to tell which runners had finished in under four hours and which weren't as speedy.
"We have a chemical snapshot of what the more fit person looks like. Now we have to see if making someone's metabolism look like that snapshot, whether or not that's going to improve their performance," says Gerszten, whose ultimate goal is better cardiac care.
Don't expect a pill ever to substitute for a workout — the new work shows how complicated the body's response to exercise is, says metabolomics researcher Dr. Debbie Muoio of Duke University Medical Center.
But scientists are hunting nutritional compounds that might help tweak metabolic processes in specific ways. For example, Muoio discovered the muscles of diabetic animals lack enough of a metabolite named carnitine, and that feeding them more improved their control of blood sugar. Now, Muoio is beginning a pilot study in 25 older adults with pre-diabetes to see if carnitine supplements might work similarly in people who lack enough.
Next up: With University of Vermont researchers, she's testing how metabolic changes correlate with health measures in a study of people who alternate between a carefully controlled Mediterranean diet and higher-fat diets.
"The longterm hope is you could use this in making our way toward personalized medicine," Muoio says.
___
EDITOR's NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

Wikio

Weighing the Evidence on Exercise

April 12, 2010

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

How exercise affects body weight is one of the more intriguing and vexing issues in physiology. Exercise burns calories, no one doubts that, and so it should, in theory, produce weight loss, a fact that has prompted countless people to undertake exercise programs to shed pounds. Without significantly changing their diets, few succeed. “Anecdotally, all of us have been cornered by people claiming to have spent hours each week walking, running, stair-stepping, etc., and are displeased with the results on the scale or in the mirror,” wrote Barry Braun, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in the American College of Sports Medicine’s February newsletter.

But a growing body of science suggests that exercise does have an important role in weight loss. That role, however, is different from what many people expect and probably wish. The newest science suggests that exercise alone will not make you thin, but it may determine whether you stay thin, if you can achieve that state. Until recently, the bodily mechanisms involved were mysterious. But scientists are slowly teasing out exercise’s impact on metabolism, appetite and body composition, though the consequences of exercise can vary. Women’s bodies, for instance, seem to react differently than men’s bodies to the metabolic effects of exercise. None of which is a reason to abandon exercise as a weight-loss tool. You just have to understand what exercise can and cannot do.

“In general, exercise by itself is pretty useless for weight loss,” says Eric Ravussin, a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., and an expert on weight loss. It’s especially useless because people often end up consuming more calories when they exercise. The mathematics of weight loss is, in fact, quite simple, involving only subtraction. “Take in fewer calories than you burn, put yourself in negative energy balance, lose weight,” says Braun, who has been studying exercise and weight loss for years. The deficit in calories can result from cutting back your food intake or from increasing your energy output — the amount of exercise you complete — or both. When researchers affiliated with the Pennington center had volunteers reduce their energy balance for a study last year by either cutting their calorie intakes by 25 percent or increasing their daily exercise by 12.5 percent and cutting their calories by 12.5 percent, everyone involved lost weight. They all lost about the same amount of weight too — about a pound a week. But in the exercising group, the dose of exercise required was nearly an hour a day of moderate-intensity activity, what the federal government currently recommends for weight loss but “a lot more than what many people would be able or willing to do,” Ravussin says.

At the same time, as many people have found after starting a new exercise regimen, working out can have a significant effect on appetite. The mechanisms that control appetite and energy balance in the human body are elegantly calibrated. “The body aims for homeostasis,” Braun says. It likes to remain at whatever weight it’s used to. So even small changes in energy balance can produce rapid changes in certain hormones associated with appetite, particularly acylated ghrelin, which is known to increase the desire for food, as well as insulin and leptin, hormones that affect how the body burns fuel.

The effects of exercise on the appetite and energy systems, however, are by no means consistent. In one study presented last year at the annual conference of the American College of Sports Medicine, when healthy young men ran for an hour and a half on a treadmill at a fairly high intensity, their blood concentrations of acylated ghrelin fell, and food held little appeal for the rest of that day. Exercise blunted their appetites. A study that Braun oversaw and that was published last year by The American Journal of Physiology had a slightly different outcome. In it, 18 overweight men and women walked on treadmills in multiple sessions while either eating enough that day to replace the calories burned during exercise or not. Afterward, the men displayed little or no changes in their energy-regulating hormones or their appetites, much as in the other study. But the women uniformly had increased blood concentrations of acylated ghrelin and decreased concentrations of insulin after the sessions in which they had eaten less than they had burned. Their bodies were directing them to replace the lost calories. In physiological terms, the results “are consistent with the paradigm that mechanisms to maintain body fat are more effective in women,” Braun and his colleagues wrote. In practical terms, the results are scientific proof that life is unfair. Female bodies, inspired almost certainly “by a biological need to maintain energy stores for reproduction,” Braun says, fight hard to hold on to every ounce of fat. Exercise for many women (and for some men) increases the desire to eat.

Thankfully there has lately been some more encouraging news about exercise and weight loss, including for women. In a study published late last month in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from Harvard University looked at the weight-change histories of more than 34,000 participants in a women’s health study. The women began the study middle-aged (at an average of about 54 years) and were followed for 13 years. During that time, the women gained, on average, six pounds. Some packed on considerably more. But a small subset gained far less, coming close to maintaining the body size with which they started the study. Those were the women who reported exercising almost every day for an hour or so. The exercise involved was not strenuous. “It was the equivalent of brisk walking,” says I-Min Lee, a researcher at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the lead author of the study. But it was consistently engaged in over the years. “It wasn’t something the women started and stopped,” Lee says. “It was something they’d been doing for years.” The women who exercised also tended to have lower body weights to start with. All began the study with a body-mass index below 25, the high end of normal weight. “We didn’t look at this, but it’s probably safe to speculate that it’s easier and more pleasant to exercise if you’re not already heavy,” Lee says.

On the other hand, if you can somehow pry off the pounds, exercise may be the most important element in keeping the weight off. “When you look at the results in the National Weight Control Registry,” Braun says, “you see over and over that exercise is one constant among people who’ve maintained their weight loss.” About 90 percent of the people in the registry who have shed pounds and kept them at bay worked out, a result also seen in recent studies. In one representative experiment from last year, 97 healthy, slightly overweight women were put on an 800-calorie diet until they lost an average of about 27 pounds each. Some of the women were then assigned to a walking program, some were put on a weight-training regimen and others were assigned no exercise; all returned to their old eating habits. Those who stuck with either of the exercise programs regained less weight than those who didn’t exercise and, even more striking, did not regain weight around their middles. The women who didn’t exercise regained their weight and preferentially packed on these new pounds around their abdomens. It’s well known that abdominal fat is particularly unhealthful, contributing significantly to metabolic disruptions and heart disease.

Scientists are “not really sure yet” just how and why exercise is so important in maintaining weight loss in people, Braun says. But in animal experiments, exercise seems to remodel the metabolic pathways that determine how the body stores and utilizes food. For a study published last summer, scientists at the University of Colorado at Denver fattened a group of male rats. The animals already had an inbred propensity to gain weight and, thanks to a high-fat diet laid out for them, they fulfilled that genetic destiny. After 16 weeks of eating as much as they wanted and lolling around in their cages, all were rotund. The scientists then switched them to a calorie-controlled, low-fat diet. The animals shed weight, dropping an average of about 14 percent of their corpulence.

Afterward the animals were put on a weight-maintenance diet. At the same time, half of them were required to run on a treadmill for about 30 minutes most days. The other half remained sedentary. For eight weeks, the rats were kept at their lower weights in order to establish a new base-line weight.

Then the fun began. For the final eight weeks of the experiment, the rats were allowed to relapse, to eat as much food as they wanted. The rats that had not been running on the treadmill fell upon the food eagerly. Most regained the weight they lost and then some.

But the exercising rats metabolized calories differently. They tended to burn fat immediately after their meals, while the sedentary rats’ bodies preferentially burnedcarbohydrates and sent the fat off to be stored in fat cells. The running rats’ bodies, meanwhile, also produced signals suggesting that they were satiated and didn’t need more kibble. Although the treadmill exercisers regained some weight, their relapses were not as extreme. Exercise “re-established the homeostatic steady state between intake and expenditure to defend a lower body weight,” the study authors concluded. Running had remade the rats’ bodies so that they ate less.

Streaming through much of the science and advice about exercise and weight loss is a certain Puritan streak, a sense that exercise, to be effective in keeping you slim, must be of almost medicinal dosage — an hour a day, every day; plenty of brisk walking; frequent long runs on the treadmill. But the very latest science about exercise and weight loss has a gentler tone and a more achievable goal. “Emerging evidence suggests that unlike bouts of moderate-vigorous activity, low-intensity ambulation, standing, etc., may contribute to daily energy expenditure without triggering the caloric compensation effect,” Braun wrote in the American College of Sports Medicine newsletter.

In a completed but unpublished study conducted in his energy-metabolism lab, Braun and his colleagues had a group of volunteers spend an entire day sitting. If they needed to visit the bathroom or any other location, they spun over in a wheelchair. Meanwhile, in a second session, the same volunteers stood all day, “not doing anything in particular,” Braun says, “just standing.” The difference in energy expenditure was remarkable, representing “hundreds of calories,” Braun says, but with no increase among the upright in their blood levels of ghrelin or other appetite hormones. Standing, for both men and women, burned multiple calories but did not ignite hunger. One thing is going to become clear in the coming years, Braun says: if you want to lose weight, you don’t necessarily have to go for a long run. “Just get rid of your chair.”

Gretchen Reynolds writes the Phys Ed column for the magazine. She is writing a book about the frontiers of fitness.

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Exercise 'cuts risk of developing painful gallstones'

Gallstones are common but some go undetected Doing lots of exercise drastically cuts the risk of developing painful gallstones, UK researchers have found. Gallstones are common but only 30% of cases have symptoms and complications. A University of East Anglia study of 25,000 men and women found those who were the most active had a 70% reduced risk of those complaints. The team, writing in the European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, said one reason might be reduced cholesterol levels in the bile. They said exercise also raised levels of "good" cholesterol and help improves movement through the gut, all of which could contribute to the lowered risk.  If everyone was to achieve the impossible and do the same amount of exercise as those in the most active category, gallstones could be reduced by 70%  Dr Paul Banim, study leader Those taking part in the study were split into four groups depending on how much exercise they did and the researchers found that those who did moderate amounts of exercise also had a lower risk of painful symptoms from gallstones than those who were the most inactive. They worked out that if everyone increased the amount of exercise they did by one category 17% of gallstones that need medical treatment could be prevented. Using the same data the researchers had previously discovered that drinking a moderate amount of alcohol is protective against gallstones. Consuming two units a day cuts the chance of developing gallstones by a third, the earlier study showed. Cholesterol Gallstones form in the gallbladder from bile and are generally made up of hardened cholesterol. It is thought that around one in three women and one in six men get gallstones at some point in their life but they are more common in older adults. ACTIVITY LEVELS Inactive - sedentary job, no exercise Moderately inactive - sedentary job plus 30 min exercise daily or standing job but no exercise Moderately active - sedentary job plus 1h exercise daily, standing job plus 30 min exercise or physical job Active - Sedentary job plus more than 1h exercise daily, standing job plus more than 30 min exercise, or physical job with some exercise Other factors which increase the chances of them forming include pregnancy, obesity, rapid weight loss and some medications. Many people who have gallstones may never know they have them but for some they cause severe pain, inflammation and infection and jaundice. And almost 50,000 people have to have their gallbladders removed every year in the UK. Study leader Dr Paul Banim, a clinical lecturer at the University of East Anglia and a specialist registrar in gastroenterology said: "It is difficult to prove a link between lifestyle and disease but we weren't surprised to see these results. "If everyone was to achieve the impossible and do the same amount of exercise as those in the most active category, gallstones could be reduced by 70%." Dr Charlie Murray, secretary of the British Society of Gastroenterology, said the study seemed to show a direct protective effect of higher levels of exercise. "The study does not however tell us how much exercise is effective in prevention of gallstones as this would require specific recording of exercise activity, nor the mechanism by which exercise is protective. "It does however demonstrate that as with the prevention of many disease processes, exercise improves your chances of staying healthy."

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Exercises You've Never Tried Vol 20

by the World's Most Dangerous Editors

Back in 2002, the first Spiderman movie was the top box office draw, President Bush fainted after choking on a pretzel, and TMUSCLE launched the first installment of Exercises You've Never Tried.

It kinda brings big manly tears to our eyes, ya know? All the pain we've caused, the limp-inducing DOMS, the exquisite microtrauma.

Ah, memories.

High time for another one, don't you think? If your progress has stalled or you just need a new challenge, here are ten fresh movements to help you fill out that snazzy new TMUSCLE shirt!

#1: The Mid-Range Partial Dumbbell Bench Press

Want the best pump of your life while at the same time activating the highest percentage of motor units? Then take a tip from Coach Nick Tumminello and try mid-range partials.

Here's how to do them with the dumbbell bench press. In a nutshell, don't go all the way down and don't go all the way up; stick to the mid-range. Your elbow angles will be roughly 135 degrees at the top and 90 degrees at the bottom.

The tension and burn here are going to be intense, so be prepared. Also, there's no stretch-shortening reflex at the bottom of each rep. Put all that together and you might have to use less weight at first than what you normally would. It's okay, we won't point and laugh. (Much.)

#2: The Double Down Pulldown

You know that to hit most of the back muscles, you need to do both a vertical pulling movement (pulldown or pull-up) and a horizontal pulling movement (a row variation.) The pulling angle of a pulldown or rowing motion significantly impacts the portion of the back that receives the most stimulation. So here's a unique movement we picked up from Christian Thibaudeau that combines a parallel pull and a perpendicular pull into one menacing exercise that stimulates the entire upper back.

A lever-type machine works well here; we used a Hammer Strength high row in our video. Why? According to Thibs, "The handles start far enough from your torso that you're able to lean forward significantly in the starting position. This forward lean will ensure that the lats are maximally stretched and that the pulling line remains as parallel to your torso as possible."

Here's how it's done. From that starting position, pull the weight down while keeping the same torso angle. Squeeze the contracted position for one or two seconds, and then lean back while keeping the handles in the same position. From there, pull the weight toward you again and hold the contraction for another one to two seconds.

If your machine doesn't allow you to get into the right positions, just drop the seat and "hover" like a chick in a dirty bathroom.

#3: The "Crazy Bell" Bench Press

Here's a crazy-ass little training trick we've seen pop up in several top powerlifting gyms. In fact, we know a few state record holders who swear by it.

Basically, this is just a few weight plates (or kettlebells) attached to a barbell with bands (see pic.) TMUSCLE contributor Craig Weller notes that the effect here has to be felt to be truly understood. He says benching with this set-up feels like having a wild animal tug on the bar as you move it.

How's it work? This benching method can be thought of as an injury preventer. The unstable, dynamic load places a huge emphasis on stabilization muscles as the entire shoulder girdle must fire maximally to keep the bar path tight and stable throughout the press.

It's also a great tool for lifters with shoulder issues and can be used to build work capacity in pressing movements. "With advanced lifters," Weller notes, "it's a novel stimulus that can force further neural adaptations and eventually greater strength."

Now, don't be a dumbass and injure yourself with this injury-prevention exercise. That would be embarrassing. Go light at first to get the hang of it, use a spotter, and only use this technique for the bench press. (It's just too tricky for the deadlift and squat.) Just focus on gripping the bar as hard as you can and maintaining maximal tightness throughout your body.

If you don't have bands and spare plates, just hang a few hungry babies and/or angry midgets from the bar. Same effect.

#4: Dip Shrugs

Breaking News! There are methods to build your traps besides standard shrugs and upright rows! Yes, for reals. Here's one of them: the dip shrug.

Hop onto a set of dipping bars. Hold yourself up by keeping your arms fully extended and locked. Let your body sink down between your arms. From there, push yourself up, trying to bring your chest as high as you can. Remember, the arms remain locked the whole time.

And if you're a real bad-ass and/or show-off, try the shrug dip in the L-sit gymnastic position.

#5: Sumo Deadlift Shrugs

And here's one more new way to build beastly traps. Position yourself as if you were going to perform a sumo deadlift: wide stance, hands inside the legs.

Lift the bar to mid-shin. From there, perform a shrug — try to bring your shoulders up — while keeping the exact same stance.

Yeah, people will stare. But in a few months they'll be staring at your big-ass traps!

#6: Ab Choppers

Here's a great "core" exercise from bodybuilding coach Scott Abel.

Hold a medicine ball or dumbbell with both hands. Spread your feet about shoulder-width apart. Push your hips back, as if you were preparing to jump, and start the movement with the ball or dumbbell between your legs and as far back as you can reach. Now pull it upward as fast as you can until your arms are fully extended overhead. Immediately squat down for the next rep.

Abel notes: "You can do any number of variations. Change the angles by going from vertical to horizontal or diagonal. With cables or tubing, you can go high to low or low to high."

When you're doing diagonal chops — low to high or high to low — you can pivot on one foot to extend your range of motion. That involves both the front and rear oblique systems. The best benefit of doing choppers with a pivot is the simultaneous inclusion of both the anterior and posterior oblique systems.

And remember, the key here is speed. You want to emphasize acceleration and deceleration.

#7: The Push-up Pyramid

Yeah, push-ups are boring. And it's easy to out-grow them, so to speak.

Still, the classic push-up remains a favorite of coaches like Chad Waterbury, who uses it to train his athletes for explosive strength. Nick Tumminello adds that the push-up is often misunderstood and underutilized.

So how do you sex up the push-up? Try this pyramid challenge we picked up from Chris Cooper, CSCS.

Start in a push-up position. Do 1 rep, pause at the top for two seconds, do 2 reps, pause for two seconds, do 3 reps, pause for two seconds. Try to get up to 10 reps, and then work your way back down. You'll think this is easy, until you're about halfway through. That's when the real fight begins!

Our favorite variation is to pause for two seconds in the bottom position instead of top. Ouch.

#8: The Constant Tension Alternate Curl

Want to take advantage of muscular tension, isometric potentiation, unilateral-enhanced neural drive, and other big words and phrases? Then check out this "new" way to curl!

Start with both arms in the fully flexed position — the "top" of the curl. Lower (eccentric phase) the working arm while keeping the non-working arm flexed. Curl up the working arm until both arms are once again flexed. Then switch arms and do the same thing. You keep on alternating this way until the set is completed.

The benefits, according to Coach Thibaudeau, are:

1. The biceps are under constant tension. While the non-lifting arm is "waiting its turn," it's still contracted isometrically.

2. You're performing a unilateral dynamic movement.

3. You're preceding the dynamic action by an isometric one.

The downside is that you can't use as much weight, so you won't create as much muscle damage. This is why it's important to use this exercise as a secondary biceps movement, after a heavier exercise.

Like it? Want a variation? Use the same technique with dumbbell preacher curls.

#9: Partial Overhead Press

This one steals a page from Olympic lifting (an overhead press), combines it with a powerlifting technique (a limited range of motion, or ROM), and ends up with a kick-ass triceps exercise for size and strength... the partial overhead press.

To begin, perform a basic, standing overhead press using the same grip width and foot stance you'd use to do a complete set. From the lockout position, lower the bar until it just grazes the top of your hair, or the top of your chrome-dome for you poor, follicly challenged lifters. Press it straight back up, and you've done one rep.

The complete ROM is from your scalp to your arm's full extension... that's it. By keeping the movement shorter than a full overhead press, the focus stays on the triceps, while still allowing the use of heavy loads.

The subtle key to this exercise is to keep the bar directly overhead, in line with the ears, as opposed to pressing slightly in front of the body and looking upwards, like you'd do with a traditional military press. This helps to further disengage the delts and makes the triceps work that much harder.

#10: MacGyver's Glute-Ham Raise

Some lucky bastards have a glute-ham raise machine in their gyms. Others have good training partners and can perform the "natural" glute-ham raise. But some of you have neither, so what are you going to do? Just walk around with weak hams and a droopy ass? Heck no, you're going to go MacGyver instead!

Find yourself a pulldown machine or similar, adjust the lap pads, and — to the shock and horror of the ACE-certified personal trainers — start performing glute-ham raises!

The key here is to keep your torso tight and lower it slowly and under control. Your posterior chain (low back, glutes, and hams) should be screaming.

When you start nearing parallel, you're going to hit the floor. That's okay, just catch yourself smoothly in a push-up position, absorb the impact, and fling yourself back up. As soon as you can, contract the glutes and hams, letting them do the rest of the work, pulling you back to upright.

If the ACE-certified trainers give you shit, judo-toss them to the floor and use your muscular ass to pop their heads like bubble wrap.

Wrap-Up

Ten new exercises and nineteen more Exercises You've Never Tried articles in the archives. That should keep you busy for a while!

Models: Andrew Barker, Tim Smith
Location: Gold's Gym, Abilene, Texas

Setting up for the "Crazy Bell" Bench Press.

© 1998 — 2009 Testosterone, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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Fountain of youth

There is no fountain of youth for aging muscles. The best advice for now: Eat well and exercise regularly throughout life.

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4 Ways French Women Stay Thin (Without the Gym)

Hate the Gym? How Very French, by Mireille Guiliano

The bestselling author of French Women Don’t Get Fat explains how French women exercise — no spandex required.

By Mireille Guiliano

Photo: Andrew French

2.) Incorporate simple resistance movements into your daily routine. Use your own body weight as resistance wherever possible. Isometric exercises, discreet but effective, are very French. This can be done before you even leave the house in the morning. For example, while waiting in traffic or on the subway, contract your abs for 12 seconds with your back pressed against the seat (it’s better for you than road rage). When reading a magazine at home, try sitting on the floor with your legs stretched and apart in a V and your hands on each side; this is a great stretch for your inner thigh muscles.

3.) Take care of your core. I’m a firm believer that we need to attend to our abdominals as we age. These are the muscles that hold all our vital organs in place; they support good posture and a healthy spine, something we must take care of as we get older. Do a few sit-ups as part of a little stretch/exercise/yoga routine in the morning — it’s never too early or too late to start this ritual.

4.) Acquaint yourself with small to moderate free weights (3-5 lbs.), especially if you’re over 40. A bit of extremely simple resistance training is an antidote to hours spent on gym machines. Short but focused movement with small weights is a good way to preserve upper body tone and bone density and supplement the cardiovascular benefits of an active lifestyle. A little goes a long way, and that only increases the older you get, so don’t let extremism overtake you.

You don’t have to torture yourself on those metal contraptions or run a marathon to stay trim. French women reject the notion of 'no pain, no gain.'

5.) Get en vélo. Americans tend to see bicycling as recreation, and often either as a child’s pastime or a hobby for only the most serious triathletes. But French and European women see cycling as a mode of transportation. I encourage those who can bike to work or shopping to do so. One of my pleasures in Provence is taking my bike to run errands. Riding my bike is one of my favorite warm weather routines and is, of course, environmentally clean and efficient, so I am happy to see bikes and bike lanes increasing in New York and other cities. Cycling has well-known health benefits: it’s a low-impact, mild aerobic exercise that strengthens your heart and lungs; tones the large (read: fat-burning) muscle groups; keeps joints, tendons and ligaments flexible; builds stamina; and is generally fun, reducing stress and boosting your mood. And the view from a real bicycle ride beats the view from a stationary bike in a white-walled gym any day of the week.

6.) Yoga. If there was ever a fountain of youth, it might be the practice of yoga. Not only does it reduce stress, improve your posture and help to develop longer, leaner limbs, it also speeds up your metabolism, works nearly every muscle group and promotes an overall bodily wellness that no other sport or class can compete with. I practice yoga religiously, usually in the comfort of my own home. I am no yogi; I do not spend hours upon end on my head — I simply have a handful of mastered poses and movements that make me feel good and keep me limber and trim. Most women can find 20-30 minutes a day to practice if they make it a priority. No equipment necessary.

7.) Vive l’escalier! Taking the stairs whenever possible is one of the main tenets of my philosophy. It always astounds me to see people who live no higher than the fourth floor and with nothing more to carry than themselves taking the elevator. In France, walking up and down stairs is a perfunctory part of our day. We rarely spend an hour stair climbing, but you should know that climbing stairs burns a stunning 1100 calories per hour. Climbing a couple flights a day will surely go a long way. A few times a week I choose to walk up the 15 flights of stairs to my apartment for some healthy fun — and yes, I do enjoy it.

In the end, remember that those who overexert themselves inevitably burn out, but those who know how to stay fit while enjoying life come out ahead, mentally and physically.

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