Incline Bench Press Technique

One exercise I don't talk about enough is the Incline Bench Press


Here is a little tutorial with me performing the exercise

Step 1.

Lying seated in a 30 degree incline position

Take a gripp approx 20 inches apart keeping the elbows in tight

With a tight grip press the bar out of the rack and move it over the upper chest area with arms locked out.

Figure 1. " Start Position"

Step 2. The Descent

"Break the bar" Grip the bar like you are trying to break the bar in half

Inhale and begin to lower the bar towards your Chest, landing on the Sternum area.

Keep you legs and back Tight and prepare for the Punch upwards.

Figure 2. The Descent

Step 3 "Punching Upwards"

This is the Critical Stage.

Now drive your elbows and fists upwards while flaring your lats at the same time.

Drive the bar as quickly as possible while maintaining control to the top lockout position.

Once there begin the next rep until you have completed the desired number of reps in your set.

Figure 3 "Punching Upwards"

Things to Avoid

Becare full when doing this exercise .

Using too much Weight

Often a lifter thinks he can Incline as much as he can do flat bench. This never the case.

Using too much Weight can cause you to lose form or struggle too much

Figure 4. "Too Much Weight"

Don't # 2

No Spotter

This is asking for trouble you should always use a spotter, and have your spotting bars in place when using a power rack.

Severe injury can result from not using a spotter.

Figure 5. "No Spotter"

Protein Bar Recipe

If you have ever talked to me , been trained by me
or read ANY of my emails you know that I believe
Protein intake is the Most Important aspect of
Performance Nutrition!!

Here's a great little way to boost your Protein intake
and get your sweet tooth fix in too.

Ingredients

2/3 cup flax meal
2 scoops NeoGenixx Whey Fusion Protein
4 Tbsp Natural Peanut Butter
1/2 cup Water
Stevia, to taste (approx: 2tsp)

Blend ingredients together in a bowl until it becomes
a blob of dough. It will be somewhat sticky.

Place the sticky dough into a small casserole or baking
pan and smooth out into a flat level surface.

Then put in the refrigerator to cool or you can freeze them if you prefer.

Once cooled or frozen you can cut them up into bars.

Makes approximately (4) 2in x 4in bars.

Nutrition Data per bar:

Calories: 205
Protein: 18 gms
Carbs: 7 gms
Fat: 11 gms

If you would like a lower calorie bar and maybe less of
a peanut butter taste you can modify the ingredients
by using 2.5 scoops of NeoGenixx Whey Fusion Protein powder,
2 Tbsp natural peanut butter, 1/3 cup of water and 2tsp of Stevia.

This will lower the calories per bar by approximately
35 calories, 3 less grams of fat, 1 less gram of carbs
and 1 extra gram of protein.

This recipe is also rich not only in natural monounstaturated
fats that can help lower total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol
,plus raise HDL (good) cholesterol, but rich in Omega 3 fats
because of the flax meal and Omega 3 fats that flax meal provides.

You will consume about 2.5 gms of Omega 3 fats per bar.

Work Hard - Eat Lots of Protein - Become the Dominant Animal in The Pack!!

Friday Nite Benching

It's been a while since I posted (boo!)

This Friday's Workout was a grinder

Raw Max Bench for 5 Singles @ 545

Set 1 - 2 reps
Set 2 - 2 reps
Set 3 - 1 rep
Set 4 - 1 rep
Set 5 - 1 rep - probably my fastest press ever at that weight

Tricep Hell

Close Grip
315 off Boards 5 reps per board

1 board - 5 reps
2 boards - 5 reps
3 boards - 5 reps
4 boards - 5 reps



Did 2 Sets

One Arm Bench Press

135 - 5 reps per side
155 - 3 reps per side
175 - 2 reps per side




I have some video coming of the Tricep Hell and the One Arm Benching

The Problem I have with Fat Burners

It's January..It's New years Resolution time...People are looking for the Magic Secret

Thats why I wrote the following article on Fat Burners

The problem I have with Fatburners

The Problem I have with Fat Burners Are 2 fold

1 - People forget to eat while they are on a good fat burner. Their appetite is suppressed.

Unfortunately you will be losing all too important lean muscle mass as well.Leaving you with a slower metabolic rate once you come off, meaning more weightgain afterwards.

2 - The other issue is when people stop using a good fat burner, they most often than notgo back to the same bad lifestyle choices they were making before which lead to theoriginal weight gain.

This means they start gaining the weight and coupled with the 1st issue of losing muscle massand lowering their metabolic rate they gain back even more weight than they did before!!

Now What I Really Love about Fat Burners..

When we are trying to make some positive changes to our lifestyle like eating better and eating less calories as well as starting to exercise or exercise more often.

Two things happen.

1 - we are hungry

2 - we are tired

A good fat burner will help by

A - curbing our appetite , allowing us to incorporate a better diet and eating schedule.Basically eating when we are supposed to not because we are starving.

B - Give us more energy so we can make the switch to more frequent exercise moresmoothly. Basically, forcing us to workout to burn off the excess energy.

C – They also do Burn FAT!

The idea here is that we our better able to make lifestyle changes that we can make a habit of so that when you come off the fat burners your are in the habit now of eating better and exercising.

This way you keep from reverting back to the old habits that got you into trouble in the first place.The Top Three Fat Burners I recommend are here….

Local Powerlifter Dan Macdonald

Danny MacDonald is 21 Years old and has been powerliftig for less than a year.

recently Danny set a Provincial Junior Bench Record with a 408 Bench Press

in Windsor at the 2009 Ontario provicial Bench Champion ships.

Although Dan has been using a bench shirt as of late he has learned from training with me and Eric that he has to continue to improve his raw bench press all the time.

check it out as he hits a 370lb Bench Raw just last week!!

Wanna See a Big Deadlift?

On November 28th we held our NeoGenixx Last Chance Powerlifting meet in Orleans

in basement training facility at Fitness Warehouse.



We had lots of new lifters



We had lots of records being broken



One Big Bastard that showed up was Kelly Branton



Check the video below to see him Deadlift 313 kg (689.86 lbs)



for a new Provincial Junior (under 21) Record













What a beast and he still a pup!!



We will see lots more from this youngblood in the future

New Guest Blogger

In the last couple of years I have gotten now Darren Mallette

Cool guy who started training hardcore powerlifting and strongman style a couple of years.

He used to do the old Mens Fitness stylke of training, but being of higher than average intelligence he knew there had to be a better bad ass way of training to get stronger, tougher and functional.

Darren is going to write a series of blogs about being an over 35 year male training hard and getting stronger than ever.

I Am a fan, you will be too!


Strength Athletics for the Over-35 Crowd

Blog 1 – Introductions

Welcome to the first in a series of articles directed at those who want to get and stay strong in their 30’s, 40’s and beyond. My name is Darren Mallette and I turn 38 at the end of 2009.

I started competing in the Fitness Warehouse “Push / Pull” events that Curd Hos hosted starting in 2003.

I don’t recall exact numbers but I think I lifted 455 pounds on the deadlift and 275 pounds on the bench press at my first meet.

I had been training with the goal of getting stronger and competing for about a year at this point. However, I had been training with weights since I was in my early teens, typically following the program of the month from the various bodybuilding magazines, with little to no results.

In 2005 I tried a strongman competition at the Gloucester Fair. I finished in the top 10 out of a field of 30+ and was immediately hooked. In 2006 I won Cornwall’s Strongest Man and in 2009 I won the Carp Fair Strongman. I’ve also recently deadlifted 585 pounds in competition and bench pressed 385 at one of Curd’s (highly recommended) seminars.

Recently Curd approached me and asked if I could write some “tips and tricks” articles on training for “us old guys”. In future posts I’ll write about how I approach training, nutrition and health.

The first tip is to see your doctor if you haven’t done so in the past year. Get a physical, go over your family history and get clearance to lift! You should also get a baseline reading for blood work – lipid assessment (cholesterol, triglycerides), blood sugar, etc. Ask for a vitamin D level check as well.