Rafika Hassan

73-Year-Old Rudy Kadlub Squats 206 Kilograms in Training for Unofficial Powerlifting World Record | BarBend Less than two weeks before he's set to compete, Kadlub made a statement by squatting a kilogram over his own world record.

Why do you go to the gym? Here’s my why.

I picked up a barbell for the first time over 20 years ago & competed in my first Olympic weightlifting meet in 2005. After all these years I still feel like I’m learning something new each and every week I train. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to just “workout” - that’s why there are assault bikes, battle ropes & trainers who’s only objective is to make you sweat & sore. However “training” is much more. It has to do with a process of building strength, capacity, better technique & bigger lifts. When you fall in love with the process of “training” you find going to the gym is actually more about learning than it is “working out.” You learn about what your body needs to perform well, you learn how to improve movement coordination, what technique cues work best to get 1% better on your lifts, and you learn how to optimize training progressions & regressions, load management and recovery. Yes you’ll break a sweat, yes you’ll get sore at times & improve your fitness - but those are side effects of a proper approach to training. I’ve learned so much about the “iron game” since I first picked up a barbell 20+ years ago. I know there’s still more to learn & I can’t wait to see what tomorrow has to teach.

What about you?
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Selamat menyambut bulan Ramadan Karem 😊

Unless you are a bodybuilder or someone with the main goal of building/shaping form, the PRIORITY of your training should be to focus on exercises that enhance movement quality & capacity. Here’s what I mean.👇🏼

The squat: builds coordination, balance, control, strength, power and the ability to link your stable foot through the rest of the body.

The seated knee extension machine: builds quad extension strength & muscle hypertrophy.

This doesn’t mean you should never do seated knee extensions. It means if you have goals of MOVING better (building a stronger squat, becoming a better powerlifter, improving your performance on the football field, having greater ease in walking up/down stairs, etc) your priorities in training need to FIRST focus on lifts that train movements & positions. Doing a “leg day” of machine work will not deliver the ROI compared to those that require & enhance the full body “linkage” (like squats, presses, deadlifts, etc).

If you want to “do both” - just make sure you have your priorities straight and understand the context of your training & how each exercise choice will influence your end goals.
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Just because you have a rippling set of abs doesn’t automatically mean you have a stable core. Eating well & building the muscles of the core with exercises like crunches may give you a chiseled 6 pack, but a stronger core doesn’t always mean there’s less chance for buckling and breaking under tension.📝

You see, each muscle that surrounds the spine does need to have sufficient amount of strength to contract and ‘turn on’. When the muscles of our core contract, stiffness is created. Much like a guy-wire that attaches and holds up a radio tower, each muscle that surrounds the spine must provide a certain amount of tension and stiffness to maintain the strength of the spine as a whole and keep it from buckling and becoming injured.✅

However, here’s what most people don’t understand. While exercises like Russian twists, sit-ups or back extensions from a GHD machine may be great at increasing strength and helping you get that ripped core, they do little to increase core stiffness.🥊

In order to enhance the quality of stiffness, one must train the core differently. This comes through the approach of using isometric exercises built to enhance muscular endurance and coordination and then training the core to resist excessive movement (not create it).📝

When you change how you train the core, your performance in the gym will improve. Dr. Stuart McGill always says, “Proximal stability enhances distal athleticism & power.” To learn more about this approach, check out my YouTube video “3 Core Exercises You Should Do Everyday!”📲
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