The Right Way to Hang Powerlifting Chains Alan Thrall goes over the proper hanging of powerlifting chains on a barbell to create accommodating resistance in your training, most often used in squats or bench presses. In one sense you can have a single chain hanging from the bar, as long as it is touching the [...]
Lower Back Pain: Rip and Inversion I've been getting lower back pain over the last year, on and off, from bad deadlift form, bad posture, and probably other factors. Rip has some advice on lower back pain for people over 40 or so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSF2ezSnpFU The gist of it is this: Wiggling your spine around, whether [...]
Heavy lifters benefit from specialty 8ft deadlift bars and other oddly-shaped bars that can let you move the weight in new ways. Let's take a look at several specialty squat bars that could help you lift more weight safely and smoothly. 8ft Long Squat Bars The first type of specialty squat bar looks much like [...]
Picking Bumpers Brandon's latest videos go over plates. Great, we love plates! Amazing how much can be said about these things you stick on the barbell to weigh it down. One thing I never thought of: Urethane competition-style bumpers are crazy hard to pick up flat off the floor. They're so slippery smooth, and like [...]
When it comes to building muscle; this question always seems to pop up. It would be pretty much impossible to find a gym that hasn’t seen people going crazy over this. “Should I squat with a freeweight barbell or Smith machine?”, “should flys be done with dumbbells or a pec-deck?” Well, at the end of [...]
Who is Brandon? A quick intro for those of you who don't know about him. Brandon Campbell Diamond is a competitive powerlifter and well-known Youtuber with a following of 190,000. Although he does make a portion of his income from Youtube, he works at a data storage company as his main job. All of his [...]
Deadlift Pause Length Deadlifts are named that way, "dead," because they are meant to be done from a dead stop. With other exercises you can bounce the weight off your shoulders, chest, or whatever it is, which is fine to a small degree because you still are holding the weight in the air the whole [...]