2024: The Year of Overcomplicating Exercise Selection

Seriously, people spend more time setting up/rearranging the gym so they can do their optimal exercise than they do actually exercising. 

Some of these exercises are fine and dandy, but there are other, simpler exercises just as fine and dandy and way less annoying to set up. 

Also, using cable face away curls as an example – which is a good exercise – but, there's too much chance of inadvertently cheating or adjusting your body in a way that completely defeats the purpose of the exercise. I see it happens all the time. Even my clients inadvertently adjust their body's position, making the exercise way less effective than intended. And that's with me constantly nagging at them. So it's a great exercise, when done correctly, but it's a tough exercise to maintain correct for on when you start getting close to failure.

I know it's not a cable, but incline dumbbell curls work pretty darn well. Bill Pearl, Steve Reeves, Frank Zane, and Vince Gironda all thought so (and yes, they DID have access to cables, too, but they preferred incline dumbbell curls). They all were more jacked than you and I will ever be. 

Quit complicating stuff.

Building muscle is not a new science. It's closer to being an ancient art at this point.

It's not the exercise selection that's limiting your gains. It's your effort, your mental focus, or the fact that you've only been lifting for a couple years. 

And nothing pisses people off in a public gym more than some skinny kid bringing over an incline bench from across the gym to set up behind a lat pulldown that already has its own bench. (BuT iTs NoT cHeSt SuPpOrTeD! -- give me a break). There's a machine already built for what you're trying to do and it's even more stable (which is so important to everyone these days) than the cable. It's called the Hammer strength high row and it's excellent.

Rant over. 

Have a great lift today!