5 Ways To Building Muscle and Athleticism at the Same Time!

 If you're going to train, the best way to do it is to train for straight-up PERFORMANCE.

When you train to get stronger, faster, and more explosive, you're bound to add on slabs of lean muscle to your frame all while cutting some unwanted fat.

It's just how it goes.

In my line of work, I train ALL people, athlete or not, as an athlete, and here's why:

When you train like an athlete, meaning, you sprint, lift heavy weights, train explosively, and condition hard, your body changes.

Look at the world's top athletes and tell me you don't want to look just like them.

They ripped up and jacked to the max! Every guy's dream that is serious about training wants to look like them.

If not, then why do you train??

I got 5 different "freak" movements you need to throw into your training arsenal ASAP to start getting more results!

Here they are in NO particular order...

1) Barbell Cheat Curls

You want to talk about adding some lean mass onto your traps, biceps, upper back, shoulder, and ass, the barbell cheat curl is it!

Not enough athletes and trainees perform barbell cheat curls. It's almost a lost art anymore.

My athlete's at the Forged Athlete Gym do these at least once every other few weeks.

Barbell cheat curls will build some serious strength in your whole upper body as well as your hips, hamstrings, and glutes.

Hit these for sets of around 4-8.

You can go a little bit heavier than normal curls because you exploding through your hips. Just like an athlete should baby!

2) Thick Battling Rope Circuits

When I first got a hold of my 2-inch thick battling rope, I was in awe!

Just holding the rope in your hands was heavy enough!

If you don't know or haven't seen the battling rope routine yet, I highly suggest you get educated up as soon as possible!

These are killer at helping you build up serious power and strength in your whole body. Your conditioning will go through the roof as well!

I like to put battling rope circuits in at the end of my workouts for finishers. I usually do Tabata style sets (20 secs on with 10 secs rest for 8 rounds) or do brutal 30-15 interval sets which are complete hell!

There's an endless amount of movements you can do with battling ropes including double whips, alternating whips, and arm circles. My personal favorite is the double whip with a reverse grip. KILLER!

3) Single Arm Push Presses

If you're not lifting things over your head in any way shape or form, you're missing out!

Military presses and other overhead pressing variations are great for total body core development as well as building up the shoulder muscles as well.

What I like to do is grab a heavier dumbbell or kettlebell and perform low reps of heavy 1 arm push presses.

Single-arm push presses involve you using your hips to generate some power like barbell cheat curls do, so we get to work in some explosiveness with this movement as well. We also work strength by using heavier weights.

What I love the most about these is that they force you to really lock in your abs because you're off-balance and when that weight is overhead, you need to be tight as heck to support the weight.

Throw these into your routine with sets of 5 to 6 reps per arm. Use a kettlebell or dumbbell.

4) Sandbag Power Cleans

Mostly everyone knows about barbell cleans. Regular barbell cleans are excellent exercise but what most people don't know about our sandbag power cleans.

These are much easier to learn and are a staple of my athlete's program.

First of all, if you've never trained with a sandbag before, you're missing out a ton!

Sandbags of one of the most effective tools at building strength, power, and muscle I can think of!

With sandbag power cleans, you build up power in the hips, strength in the shoulders, traps, and forearms as well as grip to boot. You also build up some good leg strength as well.

Sandbag Power cleans are an overall winner for building total athleticism.

I like these for lower reps around 5 or 6 but sometimes, for extreme conditioning, hitting these for sets of 10 to even 15 will bust you up good and have you seriously getting lean and mean!

5) All OUT Sprints

What's an athletic program without sprints???

If you're not sprinting, you're NOT an athlete!

Bottom line, you need to be able to move fast. Sprinting is by far one of the most athletic things you can do. You force your whole body to work as one unit. Not to mention, sprinting will help you torch lots of body fat off your body as well.

Do you see any chubby big-time sprinters out there??

What I like about sprinting is it gets and keeps you strong. If you're extremely weak, sprinting will be a challenge for you. When you have good amounts of strength, sprinting comes a lot more naturally.

Way too many people get away from sprinting in fear of it causing injury. You have just as good of a chance of getting injured running 5 miles every day as you do doing short sprints of 20-100 yards. Trust me on this.

Sprints of anywhere from 5 yard get off's to 200 m all-out sprints are what I prescribe.

I add in sprints before and after workouts. Depending on the goal at hand, sprints need to be in your program no matter what. If your goal is to increase overall speed, do your sprint at the beginning of your workout when you are fresh.

If your goal isn't increasing speed but maybe shredding up your body, sprints at the end of your workouts are better.

Either way, you gotta do me!

So that's my list of "freak" movements to get you building more muscle and athleticism at the same time!

I recommend you get these into your program as soon as humanly possible!

Intent Sports offers a wide range of exercise equipment, including yoga exercise balls, ab roller wheel kit, pro battle rope, jump rope, pull up bands, fitness products, and more.