Form Before Failure
Movement before intensity. Always. Learn the lift before you load it.
How To Do the Chin-Up
Nobody can do their first one by trying harder. Here is what actually builds the pull, and which of the popular accessory drills earned its place.
Movement guideHow To Do the Goblet Squat
The easiest squat to learn and the one most people quietly do badly. Holding the weight in front changes what your body is allowed to get away with.
Movement guideHow To Do the Hanging Leg Raise
It looks like an ab exercise and it is also one of the heaviest things you can ask your lower back to tolerate. Worth knowing before you add reps.
Movement guideHow To Do the Farmer's Carry
Pick up something heavy and walk. What decides whether this builds you or wrecks your back is whether the weight is even, and by how much.
Movement guideHow To Do the Hammer Curl
Turn your palm and you change which muscle does the work. The result is the opposite of what most people have been told about grip.
Movement guideHow To Do the Triceps Pushdown
Strict reps or a bit of body english? Somebody finally tested both arms on the same person, twice a week, until failure.
Movement guideHow To Do the Chest Fly
The fly is supposed to isolate your chest. Measure the muscles and a surprising amount of the work turns out to be going somewhere else.
Movement guideHow To Do the Calf Raise
Calves have a reputation for not responding. They respond fine, but only to a specific thing, and it is not more reps.
Movement guideHow To Do the Leg Extension
Leg press or leg extension, if you had to pick one. Twelve weeks and an MRI scanner gave a clearer answer than the internet ever will.
Movement guideHow To Do the Leg Curl
Your hamstrings do two different jobs and most training only trains one of them. This is the lift that covers the other.
Movement guideHow To Do the Lateral Raise
Shoulders that look wide come from one small muscle, trained in a way most people get slightly wrong. The fix is about where the movement starts.
Movement guideHow To Do the Seated Cable Row
Let your shoulder blades move, or lock them down? Same weight, same lifter, and the two versions turn out to be different exercises.
Movement guideHow To Do the Overhead Press
One of the oldest lifts in the sport, and the literature on its variations fits on a single page. Here is what is actually established, and what is not.
Movement guideHow To Do the Leg Press
The leg press gets dismissed as the lazy squat. An MRI study of seventeen separate muscles suggests it earns its place, with one clear gap.
Movement guideHow To Do the Plank
Someone shouted encouragement and people held the plank half a minute longer with no extra muscle activity at all. That says something about what this test measures.
Movement guideHow To Do the Face Pull
The exercise most people do to fix their shoulders, done in the position that works least well. A small change to the angle fixes it.
Movement guideHow To Do the Barbell Curl
Training the biceps in a lengthened position is the loudest idea in arm training right now. Two controlled studies put it head to head against the normal version. Here is what actually happened.
Movement guideHow To Do the Incline Dumbbell Press
Everyone tells you to go incline for upper chest. Five different bench angles were tested to find where it actually peaks, and steeper is not better.
Movement guideHow To Do the Bulgarian Split Squat
The most hated lift in the gym, and one of the most useful. What you do with your torso decides which muscle ends up doing the work.
Movement guideHow To Do the Hip Thrust
The lift that built the glute training boom. It does what it says on the muscle, and does much less than promised for everything else.
Movement guideHow To Do the Lat Pulldown
The grip debate is the loudest argument in the back-training world. Someone actually tested it. The result is not what the wide-grip crowd wants to hear.
Movement guideHow To Do the Walking Lunge
Long step or short step is not a detail. Researchers measured six muscle groups across both, and the lunge you think you are doing may not be the one you are getting.
Movement guideHow To Do the Dip
Three ways to dip, and researchers measured all three. The one beginners are told to start with is the one that puts your shoulder in the worst position. Here is the order that actually makes sense.
Movement guideHow To Do the Front Squat
Heavy loads quietly tip you forward and hand the work to your hips. The front squat will not let that happen, because the bar falls off. Here is what the evidence supports and where I am borrowing from the back squat.
Movement guideHow To Do the Romanian Deadlift
This lift loads your hamstrings harder than a full-effort sprint does. Measured, not a figure of speech, and it explains why it is worth doing properly.
Movement guideHow To Do the Barbell Row
The row is one of the least studied lifts you will ever do. Here is what actually holds up, what is borrowed from the deadlift, and where I am guessing along with everyone else.
Movement guideHow To Do the Push-Up
Hands, hips, and shoulder blades. Here's what's actually worth caring about, plus one hand trick that might change what your shoulders do.
Movement guideHow To Do the Pull-Up
Grip, trunk, range of motion. Here's what holds up, and where the evidence is thin enough that you should just try it and see.
Movement guideHow To Do the Bench Press
You want to press more without your shoulders hating you. Here's the honest breakdown, in small pieces, with the thin spots flagged.
Movement guideHow To Do the Conventional Deadlift
Your back rounds, your hips shoot up, and something twinges. Here is what the science actually points to, in plain talk, plus where it is thin.
Movement guideHow To Do the Back Squat
The squat is a big deal for your body. Here's the stuff that actually holds up, told straight, plus where the science is still thin.
Movement guide