FOR THE LADIES: SEXIEST NIGERIAN MUSICIANS

A lady told me over the weekend that the content in LM was biased towards men, in recognition of this, I'm going to

 

Peter of P-Square

Full frontal

 

D' Prince













 

4 STEPS TO BOLDER SHOULDERS

The shoulder is made up of three smaller muscle groups, the anterior, medial, and posterior deltoid (named ofter the Greek term for triangle). However, most people focus on pressing exercises which target the anterior and medial heads of the deltoids, but not the posterior head. The result: rounded shoulders that appear smaller and interfere with your arms rotation, increasing your risk of injury.

 

 

 

 

SEATED SHOULDER PRESS (Anterior and Medial deltoids, triceps, upper trapezius)

 

Sit on a bench and grab the bar with your hands slightly wider than shoulder width apart and your feet flat on the floor. Press the bar overhead, hold for 3 seconds and gently lower the bar to the front of your chest. Concentrate on lifting and lowering in a straight line and avoid leaning forward. To increase the intensity, slow down the lowering phase.

 

The behind the neck variation is not recommended for people with shoulder problems as it can be hard on the rotator cuff due to the hyperextension created by bringing the bar behind the neck.

 

STANDING MILITARY PRESS (Anterior and Medial Deltoids, Triceps)

 

 

 

Using a squat rack and a weight you can lift for about eigth repetitions, hold the bar with an overhand grip, keeping your back straight and your face forward, slowly press the weight overhead until your arms are fully extended, elbows unlocked. Pause, lower the bar to your chest and repeat. Try keeping movements slow and deliberate to avoid injury.

 

 

HANDSTAND PUSHUPS (Medial deltoids and triceps)

 

 

With your back to the wall bend at the waist and place both hands on the floor at shoulder width. Kick yourself up against the wall with your arms straight. Your body should be upside down with the arms and legs fully extended. Keep your whole body as straight as possible. Tip: If doing this for the first time, have a spotter help you. Also, make sure that you keep facing the wall with your head, rather than looking down. Slowly lower yourself to the ground as you inhale until your head almost touches the floor. Tip: It is of utmost importance that you come down slow in order to avoid head injury. Push yourself back up slowly as you exhale until your elbows are nearly locked. Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.

Caution: Ensure that the floor surface is not slippery and also, if performing for the first time, use a spotter until you get good at this exercise.

 

BENT OVER CABLE ROWS (Posterior Deltoids)

 

 

Stand between the stacks of a cable station, cross your hands in front of you and bend down. Grab the left  low pulley handle with your right hand and the right one with your left hand. With your knees slightly bent and your back straight, bend forward until your back is almost parallel to the floor. Slowly raise your arms out to the your sides until they are parallel to the floor. Pause, then slowly lower your arms. Ensure that you keep your head and neck in line with your torso. Looking up can work the medial deltoids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IS TRAINING TILL MUSCLE FAILURE NECESSARY

Failure occurs during the lifting phase of a repetition when the muscles can't produce sufficient force to continue to move the weight upward. But critics and supporters of training to failure often phrase their argument in non-anatomical terms, as if your stance on failure goes to the very heart of who you are as an athlete, or even a person.

 

 

Failure comes in two ways: muscular and mechanical. Muscular failure is when you absolutely cannot lift the weight anymore and is employed in low volume/high intensity programs (typically.) Mechanical failure is when you start to slow down and/or lose form and is used in high volume programs, especially if you train alone and do not want to risk injury.

 

It has been established that training to failure increases lactic acid production more than non-failure training, and greater increases in lactic acid in muscle are critical for muscle growth, because they trigger increases in intramuscular growth factors.

A second benefit to training to failure is that, near the end of a set, all of your smaller muscle fibers become fatigued. Faced with the continued challenge of lifting a heavy weight, your nervous system is forced to use your body's larger fast-twitch muscle fibers.
 

The only problem with this approach is that once you have taxed the nervous system on a set to failure, you develop "central fatigue." Once your nervous system is fatigued, all following sets will be performed at a much lower capacity. You're setting yourself up for injury if you go to failure too often, especially with high volume/heavy weight. It's why you never see people who are natural (important part of this statement) who are elites that go to failure because it's dangerous and will lead to injury eventually (because if you do high reps, heavy weight and heavy volume, you'll burn yourself out and injure yourself because of form breakdown).

 

While failure may be a powerful tool in a bodybuilder's training regimen, it comes with a significant cost. The take-home message is that athletes need to be aware that this tool is taxing, and it shouldn't be treated lightly. If you're going train to failure, do so strategically and appropriately in a training program.

 

Failure occurs unassisted, but there are ways, such as forced reps and dropsets, to push past even that threshold. To perform a forced rep, a trainee reaches failure and then receives assistance from a training partner to continue the set. Dropsets, on the other hand, don't necessarily require a training partner. You just continue an exercise with a lower weight after hitting failure at a higher one. In either case, your body feels these techniques even more intensely than failure, for both better and worse.

The benefits of forced reps and drop sets are similar to failure training: greater metabolic stress, more lactic acid, and more muscle fiber recruitment. However, both techniques cause far greater central fatigue than normal failure training

 

 

 

5 EXERCISES FOR A FULLER CHEST

Building a fantastic chest is not rocket science, as made out by some fitness publications and personal trainers. However, it requires a lot of discipline and proper use of some basic exercises. This Circuit is designed to blast your chest from different angles, leaving you with a fuller, stronger chest. The aim is to continue the circuit until you can go no further, so I wont prescribe that you do a particular number of sets.

 

Barbell Bench Press

 

This is a gym staple and  if I was paid a dollar for every bench press rep I see each day I go to the gym, I would be a millionaire by now ( and not only in Nigerian Naira!).

 

Work with wide and medium grips, and go for high reps, increasing the weight as you go until you reach the point where you can only deliver two reps (semi -exhaustion). I usually start out with 20 reps to warm up my muscles before I blitz my chest. The aim of the bench press should be to test your mental and physical mettle, not to showcase your ego, so chuck your ego at the door!!

 

 FLAT DUMBELL FLYE

 

 

The fly helps recruit a greater amount of muscle fibers across your chest than some pressing exercises and improves the "mind-muscle connection" in more novice lifters, allowing them to engage the chest muscles more in other exercises. you should emphasize going really deep on these, getting that stretch. Really feel that at the bottom of it and squeeze it all the way to the top. Try to touch the weight together gently but don't worry about clanking the weights together initially. perform each set to exhaustion.

 

PUSH UPS

 

 

This exercise is supposed to push blood into your pecs and build endurance in your triceps and shoulders, whilst giving your muscles some rest from the weight you've just lifted. Aim to hit 100 reps at least, building your endurance until you can successfully crank out 500 reps in the course of the entire circuit.

 

INCLINE DUMBELL PRESS

 

This exercise helps build your upper chest, giving you that 'shelf' that makes your pecs look impressive. Select a challenging weight and keep the same weight  throughout the circuit, but bring your muscles to failure during each set. Make sure that your elbows never drop past your shoulders as you perform each rep, and squeeze the pecs throughout.

 

BAR DIPS

 

This fairly underrated but highly effective exercise is a fantastic cap to your workout, as it isolates and totally decimates the muscles of your chest, while developing hard core muscle endurance. Bar dips also work on the rear and front deltoids.

 

 

Round off your workout with some stretches to expand your pecs and give you a more defined look.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR WORKPLACE PRODUCTIVITY

Productivity is the combination of intelligent planning and focused efforts designed to help you do more, better.  Productivity can be continuously improved, not by multitasking (which only clogs your mental pipelines), but by doing the following.

 

1. Leave Early: If you're putting in long hours and are not feeling productive at the end of the day, try shortening your work day by 30 minutes or even an hour.

 

2. Constantly ask yourself if you what are doing presently is productive: I often catch myself spending a lot of time using Facebook or participating in irrelevant conversations while at work. When I realize that I am not working on something productive, I mentally scold myself and get back to the grind. 

 

3. Weed out distractions: I know a few people that have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Hootsuite, Tumblr, Foursquare, Shutterfly, Pinterest, Google Chat, Reddit, and StumbleUpon account. When they are not using these social media tools, they may be checking their e-mail on their smartphones or reading random facts on Wikipedia every 5 minutes. Disconnect from these tools while at work, it destroys your productivity!

 

4. Set ambitious, yet realistic goals

Les Brown, a motivational speaker and radio DJ, once said “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” If you can cross everything off of your to-do list in one day, you need to create more ambitious goals. Some goals should take as long as 1 week, 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days. People that set higher goals have a tendency to be more satisfied than those with lower expectations, according to research published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

 

One of the major reasons why people fail a goals is because they did not set a deadline. Goals have to be very specific and they should be written down. It is good to get feedback about the goals in order to refine them.

 

Goals should be personal and professional. Spending time balancing your budget can be a personal goal and putting together process flow charts to make certain recurring tasks easier at work is a professional goal.

ESKRIMA: THE ART OF THE FENCING STICK

Distinguished by efficiency, practicality, and combat-proven blade work, if you want to know how to use weapons to protect yourself and devastate an opponent, Eskrima is a very efficient way to go.

 

Two Eskrimadors in training

 

The weapon may be a blade, a stick, an umbrella, a flashlight, a ball pen – even a handkerchief can be used as a defensive weapon. Indeed, for the well-versed eskrimador, bare hands may also be employed.

Eskrima Weapons

 It is generally believed that native Filipino styles such as Eskrima were started by various tribes in order to defend against one another.  Historians speculate that these styles originally emanated from or were strongly influenced by martial arts from other areas, such as India. Kali practitioners believe that hand-to-hand combat moves are similar to those with weapons; thus, these skills are developed concurrently. Some of the popular combinations of weapons used are the single stick (solo baston), double stick (double baston), and sword/stick and dagger (espada). Along with this, the most frequently used training weapon is the rattan, a stick about the length of its wielder's arm. The participants are skilled enough to parry/counterstrike, showing respect in not intentionally hitting the training partner. Eskrima sticks are made in many sizes depending on the system and the respective ranges being trained. Common lengths range from 6" to 96", with the most common ranging from 24" to 36". Eskrima sticks are a reflection of the artist, their system and methodology.

 

Many Filipino systems focus on defending against and/or reacting to angles of attack rather than particular strikes. The theory behind this is that virtually all types of hand-to-hand attacks (barehanded or with a weapon) will hit or reach a combatant via these angles of attack and it is reasoned that it is more efficient to learn to defend against angles of attack rather than particular styles, particular techniques or particular weapons. For instance, the technique for defending against an attack angle that comes overhead from the right is very similar whether the attacker uses barefists, a knife, a sword or a spear.Perhaps because of its recent history as an art of duelists, Eskrima techniques are generally based on the assumption that both the student and their opponent are very highly trained and well prepared. For this reason, Eskrima technique tends to favor extreme caution, always considering the possibility of a failed technique or an unexpected knife. On the other hand, the practitioner is assumed to be able to strike very precisely and quickly. The general principle is that an opponent's ability to attack should be destroyed (rather than trying to hurt them to convince them to stop). Thus many strikes are to the hands and arms, hoping to break the hand holding the weapon or cut the nerves or tendons controlling it. Strikes to the eyes and legs are also important.

 

Some angles of attack and some strikes have characteristic names.

• San Miguel is a forehand strike with the right hand, moving from the striker's right shoulder toward their left hip. It is named after Saint Michael or the Archangel Michael, who is often depicted holding a sword at this angle. This is the most natural strike for most untrained people. It is also referred to as a "#1," in 12 systems which employ 5, 12 or multiple angles.
• A redondo (Spanish for "round") is a strike that whips in a circle to return to its point of origin. Especially useful when using sticks (rather than swords), such a strike allows extremely fast strikes but needs constant practice.
• An abaniko (from the Spanish for "fan") is a strike executed by whipping the stick around the wrist in a fanning motion. Not very forceful and not well suited to swords, this strike can be very quick and arrive from an unexpected angle.
• Hakbang is a general term for footwork. For example, hakbang paiwas is pivoting footwork, while hakbang tatsulok is triangle stepping.
• Punyo is a strike delivered with the butt of the weapon, usually to a nerve point or other soft spot on the opponent, although not necessarily: in skilled hands, the punyo can be used to shatter bones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN WEIGHTS

It sometimes happens that you want to train, but can't find any weights within a mile from your location; or you just dont want to pay those high gym subsrciption fees. In such situations, it helps to be ble to build weights for yourself using readily available and inexpensive material. In this article I will discuss 3 ways to improvise and build your own weights.

 

1. Milk Gallon Dumbells: Take 2 one gallon (or 5 litre) plastic milk jugs/oil jugs/water jugs and fill them with sand or water. This should give you about 5kg of weight. Use them to perform each exercise to failure i.e till your muscles cannot perform another rep. Milk jugs can also be used like kettlebells, providing you with the benefit of a kettlebell workout, without the attendant cost.

 

You can take this exercise to the next level by creating heavy weights for deadlifts and squats with 25 or 50 litre cans. This will provide you with fantastic gains at a fraction of the cost of maintaining a gym subscription.

 

Work It

 

 

2. Concrete Dumbells: I started out with these and I'm a big advocate of this inexpensive fitness option. You can make your own crude weights using just cement, gravel, toilet paper/paper towel rolls, and a bucket.

• Place the cardboard roll in the center of the bucket, and pour the mixed concrete into the bucket. The granite increases the weight.
 
• Once the concrete has dried, cut the bucket off and you now have a weight disc to put on your barbell.
 
• Cover the concrete with epoxy paint to prevent it from cracking, and make as many as you want.

Alter the thickness of the concrete and the size of the bucket to change the weight of the disc. To determine how much each weighs, place it on a scale once it has dried. You can make some pretty heavy weights for the cost of a couple of concrete bags.

 

 

 



 Sandbag Weights: To do this you need the following, Empty rice or sugar shipping sack (the local supermarkets sell them, they are like potato sacks), Sand, Duct tape, Rope, an old duffel bag (optional).

Steps:

1.  Fill the sacks with sand until desired weight is reached. (use a bucket so that you can fill to the top and have an equal distribution of sand in both sacks).
2. Tie a loop at the top of the sack.
3. Use the rope to tie and secure the loop so it doesn’t open
4. Reinforce the bottom and sides of the sack with duck tape
And that is all, rinse and repeat to make as many weights as you want.