You may watch your macros as closely as a Mandalorian binge, but for most, getting abs to pop remains an elusive and demoralizing punch to the gut—no pun intended.
And it’s not as simple as doing 1,000 crunches every day. A 2019 study by the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found...
Major muscle growth isn’t achieved solely by training, but even beginner trainees know that. The gym is where the muscles are sculpted, but the marble that will eventually be your Adonis is made in your fridge and on your stovetop.
If your goal is to gain healthy weight or 10 pounds of muscle...
Chances are you’ve at least heard of the Atkins Diet, which has been around since the ‘50s and gained mainstream recognition in the ‘70s. At its roots, Atkins is basically the original keto approach: restricting carbohydrates and leaning on high-fat protein sources to fill your daily calories...
Weightlifting is primarily about how much weight you can lift, and there have been weightlifting events for thousands of years. The purpose of training as a weightlifter is to make you stronger. Bodybuilding, on the other hand, is about using weight training to improve the size and shape of all...
Amateur bodybuilding competition is conducted using weight divisions for same reason sports like boxing, wrestling and weight lifting are: Body size is an important factor. And bigger competitors usually have an advantage over smaller competitors, all else being equal.
While competing as...
People will do just about anything to lose weight — except for eating whole foods, exercising regularly, and getting 7-9 hours of sleep, that is. As a result, countless diets have claimed to be the quickest and easiest ways to shed fat throughout the years.
There are the popular eating...
One of the easiest body parts to injure is most certainly the lower back, or lumbar back. The word lumbar is derived from the latin word lumbus, meaning lion, which is fitting considering that many weight lifters get injured while performing their lower back workout, trying to unleash their...
Dropsets are a great way to increase muscle mass, as they’re a quick and easy way to increase blood flow into the muscles, get the heart pumping, and most importantly, fatigue the muscles to ensure hypertrophy.
What are dropsets?
Dropsets are essentially a technique where you perform an...
Intermittent fasting is one of those diet strategies that seems to trend time and again. It’s a simple concept: Only eat during certain hours of the day, also known as an eating window. Plenty of athletes are fans of the diet, claiming that it has tons of benefits aside from weight loss. Turns...
Often when someone is inspired to lose weight, they decide to start doing more at-home cardio workouts. When someone’s inspired to do more at-home cardio workouts, they usually buy a piece of expensive workout equipment. And when they get tired of the expensive workout equipment, it ends up...
Antonova Ganna
When it comes to losing weight, people will try just about anything: pills, an extreme diet, and even purposely starving themselves — err, we mean intermittent fasting. One strategy that’s been around for centuries is using herbal medicines such as teas, leaves, and powders...
@ArashMarkazi/Twitter
Arash Markazi couldn’t have felt more embarrassed. While boarding a plane, the Los Angeles Times sports columnist had to ask the flight attendant for a seatbelt extender. When he got home, he weighed himself and hated what he saw—329 pounds.
“If you're in the NFL and...
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Obesity has become a serious health issue in the United States—about 69 percent of adults are overweight or obese and 36 percent are obese, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. An arguably more concerning trend is obesity among children, with one in three...
Courtesy of Žydrūnas-Savickas / M+F Magazine
With a few words of encouragement from his uncle, a 13-year-old Žydrūnas Savickas started hoisting weight in the dingy and sparse gyms scattered throughout his native Lithuania. Just nine years later, in 1998, “Big Z” won Lithuania’s Strongest Man...
Toward the end of 2018, 2017 World’s Strongest Man winner Eddie Hall went from an uber-heavy 441 pounds to a shredded (but still ridiculously huge) 358 pounds. At this weight, Hall is undoubtedly healthier and happier, and most definitely ab-ier.
Since then, "The Beast" has stayed between 358...
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If you're looking for useful weight-loss advice, you may want to look somewhere other than your social media feeds. A new study from the University of Glasgow followed nine of the most popular fitness and weight-loss influencers in the United Kingdom and found that only one of...
When you’ve been in the iron game a while, you begin to ask yourself some tough questions: How do I maximize size without sacrificing strength? How do I get stronger without getting injured? In short, how can a lifter have it all—muscle, power, and pain-free joints to enjoy the benefits? The...
Chris Nicoll / M+F Magazine
These days, bikini competitor Elisa Pecini represents vibrant health and strength whenever she takes the IFBB Pro League stage. It’s a testament to the battle the 21-year-old phenom fought and won against a debilitating and often deadly disease a few short years ago...
Marianna Gasparyan broke three records this past weekend at the Kern US Open in San Diego, and set a new all-time high Wilks score.
Kicking off her record-breaking performance, the 123-pound lifter completed a record squat of 260kg (573 pounds). The squat was not only 4.6 times her competition...