Do you wake up with tight hips or a stiff lower back? It’s because you have tight, damaged or untrained hips. Here is a simple routine you can use to fix your hips and feel better.

Do your shoulders, hips and lower back hurt?

Do you stretch, foam roll and massage them but they still hurt?

You’re not stretching wrong, you’re breathing wrong.

Watch this video to find out why that’s important and how to fix it!

The inner chest is very hard to target.  Everyone wants that line that divides your pecs.  It not only makes you look good, it helps you perform better in the gym.

A more robust set of pecs will allow you to press more, and also fill out your sweater in winter.  

Most people perform a ton of dumbbell or cable flies to hit this area, and then complain when they get cranky shoulders.

There's a better way to target this area, while not aggravating your shoulders.

A lot of people are overly ambitious in their goals.  I don't say that to imply that their goals are unattainable, they just have an unrealistic road map in their head.  

This is especially true when it comes to nutrition.  I normally ask someone "What's your biggest dietary obstacle? What do you want to change?"

They normal answer is something like "I want to change every thing! Starting tomorrow I want to only eat kale, boiled chicken and never touch salt or sugar again!" 

That's great, but it completely disregards human psychology and their own innate desire to revert back to what's comfortable.

I have to slow people down, and tell them that I don't want them to change everything overnight. I want them to slowly change their bad habits so that the process is do-able and sustainable.

The truth of the matter is that small changes over time lead to gigantic results.  Gigantic changes over a short period of time lead to frustration and failure. 

Tracking your calories is the most surefire way to successfully change your body.  If you're trying to lose fat or build muscle you need to be in control of what you eat, and be accountable for it.

However, it's not always possible to track everything you eat.  

It's also possible that you might hate math and the process of tracking your calories may be too stressful for you.  

That doesn't mean you're doomed to failure, it just means you need to employ another method.

There's a simple way you can control your portions without counting your calories.

You just need your hand and the ability to count to 2.

I am a big fan of offset exercises.  It's when you perform an exercise with only one weight, normally only on one side of your body.

It's an easy way to make "boring" exercises more fun and to change the emphasis of the movement to incorporate more of your core.  They also force you to concentrate more on the movement as you don't want to fall or lose your balance.

The Offset Goblet Squat utilizes all these principles and has a host of benefits.

Pull ups are famously hard.  They're so challenging that every underdog sports movie has a montage of the main character's pull up development.  At first they are an out of shape also ran who can't even do one pull up but over the course of one 80s song they become a svelt, contender who can bang out upwards of 10 pull ups.  Sometimes in the Russian wilderness.

Most people train pull ups wrong.  They think they are a purely strength exercise, so they load up a ton of weight on a lat pull down machine or try to cheat their way to a full pull up.

Pull ups are a skill.  You need to train the movement and the mental recognition of the separate parts of the movement. 

Yes, you need to be strong enough to pull yourself up to the bar, but you also need the physical skills to recognize what movements need to be completed in order to do that.  To be honest, most people are strong enough to do a pull up after 3 months of training.  They don't have the movement specific skills to execute a proper rep, or they freak out when they are hanging from a bar and have to overcome a mental hurdle.

Here are the only two exercises you need to progress yourself to a full pull up and to overcome the "sh*t I can't do this!" mental hurdle.

The first month of any endeavor will be the most difficult.  

This is simply because it is new, and the habits, actions and mindset required are new and different to what you are used to.  You’re going to be expending energy in new ways, and that can often be a shock to the system.
This does not mean the first month will not be fun, effective or enlightening.  It just means it will be difficult.  You will be sore, you might get tired and you might curse at us a few times.

In order to make your first month as easy as possible we focus on developing Healthy Habits.  

Taking the time to develop and reinforce these habits will make the rest of your fitness journey much easier, and ensure that you will constantly be progressing towards your goal.

Crunches are not the best exercise choice.  They are not optimal for your ab development OR the health of your spine.

This video details twenty two better options than the traditional crunch.  

The exercises included in this video will work your abs harder than 100 crunches and develop the athletic stability needed to have a healthy spine, and hips for the rest of your life.

A question I get asked a lot is “What exercise can I do to make (insert muscle) bigger?”

Most people want to be told of some magical, crazy exercise that will somehow perfectly stimulate their desired area in 5-10 reps and add 1lb of muscle per month.

As if there is an exercise Holy Grail they haven’t found yet.

I always disappoint them when I tell them the truth.

It really doesn’t matter which exercise you pick.

As long as you are stimulating the targeted muscle the exercise itself doesn’t really matter.

The most important factors that contribute to muscle size are volume, intensity and progressive overload.  It's about how often you stimulate each muscle group, how hard you work it and how much improvement you make with each muscle group that determines how big you can get.   

I'll define these terms for you as we go on.  At the end I'll show up how to put it all together to build the perfect muscle building plan.