12 Exercises You Are Not Doing!

One-Arm Cable Serratus Crunches (Serratus, Obliques)

Position yourself under a high pulley with a single handle attachment. Hold the handle next to your ear and crunch your body in to one side using only your serratus and intercostals to pull you down.

Stiff-Arm Lat Pulldowns (Lats)

Grab a wide bar attached to a lat pulldown machine slightly wider than shoulder width with thumbs over the bar. Bend slightly at the waist and without bending the elbows pull the bar down in an arc in front of you until it hits your thighs.

Weighted Bench Dips (Triceps)

Space two flat benches about 36” apart. Sit on one with your hands at your sides, holding the edge of the bench. Place your feet on the other bench. Have a partner put a 45-pound plate on your lap to test your strength. If you can perform 15 reps try two plates the next set. Smaller plates could be added as well. Make sure your partner is on hand to prevent the plates from sliding and to strip them off as you begin to fail.

Spider Curls (Biceps)

Lie face down on an elevated bench (assuming your gym doesn’t have a spider bench, which is a pretty safe assumption) with your arms hanging over one end. Pick up either a dumbbell, a pair of dumbbells, or a barbell and curl it up. This is similar to a preacher curl, but instead of your upper arms being at a 45º angle to the floor, they are perpendicular to it.

Reverse Leg Curls (Hamstrings)

Kneel on the seat of a lat machine with your ankles hooked under the knee restraints. Hold a bar or broomstick at one end with the other securely touching the floor at a right angle (for support). Keeping your body rigid, lower yourself towards the floor, using only your biceps femoris muscles. Once your torso is parallel with the floor, raise yourself back up until it’s again perpendicular to the floor.

One-Arm Bar Raises (Forearms)

Grasp an empty bar weighing between 10 and 25 pounds a few inches off from its center line. Let your arm hang at your side with one end of the bar touching the floor in front of you. Raise the end off the floor using only your forearm strength, until it’s parallel to the floor. This targets the brachioradialis. To hit the wrist flexors, reverse where you grip the bar and the movement itself.

Sprint Raises (Shoulders)

Grab a pair of dumbbells lighter than what you would use for laterals. Bend at the hips and knees as if you were crouching down to begin a race. With your torso at a 45º angle pick up the dumbbells. With elbows slightly bent raise one to the front and the other to the rear simultaneously. Imagine you are sprinting as you swing the dumbells in opposite directions, using no momentum, only your front and rear delts to move them.

Good Mornings (Lower Back)

Place a relatively light barbell across your shoulders as if you were going to squat. Bend at the hips, lowering your torso forward until it is nearly parallel with the floor before coming back up. Be careful not to let the bar roll onto your neck by pulling it down into the nook between your traps and shoulders.

Drag Curls (Biceps)

Grab a barbell with hands at shoulder width. Drag it up along your body as high as you can while pulling your elbows straight back. Hold at the top for a second and squeeze the biceps. This is a great movement for finishing off a biceps workout.

Palms-Up High Laterals (Shoulders)

The starting position is with a dumbbell in each hand, arms out to your sides, parallel to the floor, at what’s basically the top of a traditional lateral raise. Raise the dumbbells to a point just short of vertical above your head and lower to start position.

Cross Bench Pullovers (Lats, Intercostals, Triceps)

Place a dumbbell on one end of a bench. Squat down next to the bench and place your shoulders on it at its centerline. Hoist the dumbbell to arms length. With a slight bend of the elbows lower the dumbbell behind your head stopping just before it hits the floor and raise it again, making usre to keep your hips down and breathing deeply with each rep.

The Importance of Creatine for Bodybuilder

Competitive bodybuilders across the globe know that creatine is a key substance used for muscle development. As an often misunderstood chemical and supplement, the average fitness fan might be deterred from trying creatine. This is particularly true because contradictory information about creatine can make it difficult to distinguish exactly what it is and how it might be important to your health.

Natural Creatine Cycle
The liver, kidneys and pancreas naturally produce the amino acid creatine, which is converted into phosphocreatine during normal metabolic processes and then stored in the muscle cells. Natural creatine aids in the production of the primary energy source for muscle called adenosine triphosphate or ATP. During muscle movement short spurts of ATP is released into the muscle cells and metabolizes down into adenosine diphosphate, or ADP. The ADP is what actually gives muscle the power to contract and transfer energy from cell to cell. Creatine acts as a reservation system for ATP and replenishes muscle cells immediately after the breakdown into ADP. The more creatine in the body, the quicker ATP reloads the muscle cells.
The constant, rapid regeneration of the creatine cycle plays a markedly important role in normal muscular health, acting as a shuttle of sorts for constant muscle energy. Naturally low levels of creatine or inefficient creatine transport at any point in the creatine cycle can result in muscle wasting, weakness and fatigue. Factors contributing to low levels of creatine include: genetic deficiency disorders impacting the proper synthesis of creatine in the body, kidney disease that causes complications in creatine transport and chronic overuse of supplements that desensitizes the body from producing its own natural creatine stores.

Creatine and Muscle Building
When it comes to building muscle mass, creatine is the pinnacle performance supplement. Clinical studies confirm that creatine supplements used in conjunction with routine strength training exercise not only amplifies muscle size but also increases muscle strength. The key in its effects is to combine creatine with working out, not to take creatine and expect that your muscles will automatically explode without doing any work.
Creatine supplements produce these positive effects by inducing muscle cell swelling through water retention. Essentially, the supplement allows for greater hydration of the muscle cells and in turn this produces the appearance of bigger, fuller muscles. The muscle building benefits do not end there. As an amino acid, which is the building block of protein needed for muscle growth, creatine stimulates muscle protein synthesis to maximize the protein supplied to the muscle cells for sustaining bulking gains. Creatine itself is not the cause of massive muscle bulk. It serves as an avenue for activating your muscles to receive all the chemicals needed to achieve a powerful pump, and with persistence this will cause muscle gain. Once you stop using creatine supplements, the muscle built from regular strength training, will remain. What changes in ceasing creatine use is the amount of water retained in your muscle cells. It is for this reason that taking creatine supplements causes weight gain because it is water weight that you gain.
Sources, Doses, Adverse Effects
Several precursor amino acids natural in the body promote creatine synthesis but this typically can only occur if your dietary habits support the production of the precursor amino acids. A diet plentiful in animal-based proteins enhances the generation of extra creatine fuel for the muscles. However, the quickest and most efficient means for producing extra creatine in the body comes from supplemental sources.
Supplemental creatine in the form of creatine monohydrate, is the most commonly used and researched variety for muscle building. It comes as a powder, liquid, capsule or chewable supplement as well as an additive in sports drinks or energy bars. Dosing of the creatine supplement varies but a typical load for improving exercise performance involves taking 5 grams at a time, four times daily for two to seven days in a row. After loading, take a lower dose at 2 grams daily, to maintain its beneficial effects on muscle bulking.
Your body will only absorb a certain amount of supplemental creatine. During the loading phase, creatine levels reach a saturation point. Once that saturation point is achieved, taking doses higher than recommended for longer than recommended can cause adverse effects.
Side effects of creatine use include: muscle cramping, dehydration, diarrhea or nausea. If you have any form of kidney disease, taking creatine supplements is not suggested because you kidneys cannot properly filter out the byproduct creatinine, produced during the metabolic break down of creatine. Creatine supplements are legal and generally recognized as safe. However, the safety and effectiveness of long term use has not been clinically established and research is ongoing.

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