SQUAT, DEADLIFT, LEG PRESS ARE TOO SIMILAR TO EACH OTHER
Whether you are strength training for general health or for aesthetic reasons, you may be performing more than what is necessary to meet goals. Of course if you're a Bikini competitor or BodyBuilder, you will need a good variety of exercises to sculpt muscles for competitions. However most people can obtain a desired physique by applying as little as 8 basic movements in their workout program. Did you know that the squat, deadlift and leg press train nearly 80% of all the same muscles. Sure you can perform all three in one workout but why not focus on just one exercise such as the squat and improve upon it? Then perform the other ones later?

SAVING IDEAS FOR LATER
Wanna know the reason why some coaches intentionally suppress you from doing other exercises? I prefer to have my clients try and gain as much progress on a specific exercise such as the squat first until they have clearly hit a plateau. Then I can implement a different exercise but yet similar movement, the deadlift or leg press into the program to re-shock the muscles back into progress. This is an effective technique.

CHANGE LEVERS INSTEAD OF ANGLES
While I just mentioned the above three exercises are somewhat redundant, I have seen way too many workout routines repeating upper body movements as well. There are a limited amount of ways you can perform push and pull movements. Some coaches try to modify the angles, grips, range of motion and that's fine, but what has been missing is the benefit of changing the levers in the movement.

COMBOS ARE MORE CARDIO, NOT STRENGTH OPTIMIZATION
Most combination leg and upperbody movements rob the blood flow from the prime mover. If you are bored or like to do strength cardio, then combination exercises are great. But for optimized strength development in that specific muscle group, you're better off performing a more isolated movement. This is because higher blood flow is a key function to deliver ATP and Creatine to that specific muscle group. When you move too many muscles simultaneously your body will divide the blood supply.

EXCESSIVE LACTIC ACID
That burning sensation in your muscle is lactic acid. While endurance trainers deal with it, it's the enemy when you are strength training. The pain not only prevents you on continuing your repetitions, it puts you at risk on strains. This is why exercise redundancy is not necessarily a good aspect for strength training. Have you tried performing one after another a Bench Press, then a DB Incline Chest Press, then the Dip Machine, then rope push downs? Doesn't if feel like somewhat set flame to your triceps and parts of your chest?

The OSPM program coaches clients a better understand on how our body moves and where are the origins of the resistance. You'll be able to distinguish the difference between two exercises and decide whether it will be appropriate in your routine.

MORE MUSCLE BURNS FAT QUICKER
Let's start with that. Most people want to lose weight but they skip the weight training and want to focus on just more cardio and healthy eating. However they may be leaving out the most important element to sustained weight loss. Speeding up your metabolism is the true secret to sustained fat loss meaning if you want to keep the fat/weight off for months and years. How do you speed up your metabolism? Add muscle. How do you add muscle? Weight train.

MEASURING WORKOUT VOLUME IS THE MEASUREMENT OF EFFORT
When you workout multiply or load by the reps then by the sets. Do it for all exercises. This is a generic way to calculate volume but it's a poor way of doing it. I will be explaining the importance of different formulas later but for now let's just calculated volume this way.

(load x reps x sets)

MONDAY'S WORKOUT
• Bench Press: 100 x 8 x 3 = 2400
• Lat Pull Down : 100 x 8 x 3 = 2400
• Squat: 100 x 8 x 3 = 2400 TOTAL VOLUME = 7200 awm

Let's say it is Friday but the gym is too crowded and you have a hot date tonight so you are pressing for time. You instead perform the following.

FRIDAY'S WORKOUT
• Chest Fly: 80 x 8 x 3 = 1920
• DB Bench Rows: 80(40ea) x 8 x 3 = 1920
• Sumo Squats: 60 x 12 x 3 = 2160 TOTAL VOLUME = 6000 awm

Everyone has weak areas so it's difficult to determine which workout is considered better for the client, however which routine do you think is more effective to develop muscle and speeding up metabolism? The issue today, is that EfitX is the only app that can measure workout volume and it's variations that occur regularly. Hardly any other application tracks the amount of workout volume of a workout thus volume of a specific exercise. EfitX does.

HOW A COACH MAKES IT EFFECTIVE

• There are two types of volume: Strength Volume and Muscle Endurance Volume
• Coach or client monitors the total produced volume from each workout.
• The next workout should either match or exceed the previous workout volume pertaining muscle rotation
• As more workout volume is produced weekly and monthly, client will be seeing a more noticeable strength difference. They may also experience more fat loss.
• Eventually each client will level out and plateau at a specific volume.
• When this occurs, coach can shift the focus to just strength volume to break the ceiling.
• Sometimes extending the duration of frequency of workouts is necessary to acheive goals

The more you increase workout volume weekly, you get stronger faster, your muscle endurance improves quicker, your metabolism increases, you burn more fat regularly and overall you'll feel great.

Part of my research involved analyzing how quickly can clients recover from a workout. This is usually measured by perceived soreness (ps)or referred to DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscular Soreness). There are a lot of factors why people are sore for several days or don't get sore at all. The key point is you should not train a muscle group if it's still trying to recover. Also recovery is not necessarily measured by soreness but it's a good guide. Many times I have had a client say my legs are not and they are ready for their leg workout. Unfortunately he/she performed a lunch and POW there was still a lot of soreness. So sometimes people won't know they are sore until they perform a specific exercise.

Training an un-recovered muscle could lead to injury and also delays development. The best time to re-train a muscle is the first day when it is 100% recovered plus one extra day. The extra day allows the muscle to re-establish proper glucose levels. With this said, it's a complex task to determine when a muscle will recover.

This is a reason why I have created algorithms to help predict when a muscle may recover. This is calculated by historic data and client feedback.

Our bodies skeletal system is a mechanical machine with many moving parts. When bolts begin to become loose the structural integrity slowly becomes compromised. For almost every given movement there is a counter movement or opposing movement. Our joints align properly in the center so there's room to compensate with imbalance stresses. Too much of one movement leads to joint friction in areas that are not pleasant and destructive. Each direction you move your limb, the counter direction needs to compensate.

Although equal strength on a bicep curl vs a tricep extension sounds logical. It's not absolutely necessary. We evolved to have a few imbalances to simplify our desired physical lifestyle.

As a client exercises, some movements may receive more attention than others causing detrimental imbalances. The OSPM system and EfitX alleviates the hardship on trying to guess or analyze what movement is superior and which has become inferior.

Just about all weightloss diet trends share at least one common thing, this is they all create a deficit. Losing weight is mainly about discipline. But even if you have great discipline to limit calories and increase exercise, if you're numbers are all wrong you may not go anywhere. And that's the big issue. Before anyone can create an actual deficit in calories they need to understand how does weight and calories leave the body and how it intakes calories. Thereafter the next step is to determine the action and how aggressive it should be to meet a goal.