8 AT-HOME WORKOUTS TO LOSE WEIGHT AND BUILD MUSCLE

These quick and easy workout routines burn fat and build muscle, even if you’re five feet from your couch.

Get Fit From Home

There are days when the gym is the perfect respite from a long day at work. You can get in, sweat, get out, and feel completely renewed. Then there are days when the gym is one giant irritation. There are two many people clanking weights, or chatting when they should be clanking weights, and all you want to do is walk back through the door and head home. Well, guess what? You can do that—and still get a killer workout in.

Don’t believe us? Try these eight at-home routines and see for yourself. You can build muscle and lose weight all in the privacy of your home so you’re free to sweat in solitude, or bring the house down with your favorite workout songs. 

6 EXERCISES YOU SHOULD BE DOING FOR MAXIMUM GAINS

See why these moves are a must for serious weight trainers

The squat is the cornerstone of any solid strength workout. It develops strength in the quads, glutes, lower back and abdominals. In fact, its been documented that squats activate over 200 muscles in the body.

When doing squats, always emphasize technique over weight lifted. 10 body weight squats are far more effective than 10 185 lb. squats done with poor technique. Instead of working the intended muscle, every rep performed with incorrect form actually makes us more likely to injure ourselves.

7 BODYBUILDING TIPS FOR GUYS OVER 30

Follow these methods to keep your bodybuilding game strong

The sport of competitive bodybuilding is a game of adapting our training and diet to manipulate our physical appearance. As our bodies approach age 40 and beyond, there is inevitable muscle loss that will occur. Coupled together with the possibility of decreased testosterone production and ailing joints, there are a few things to consider when competing into your 30s and beyond. The following are a few important things to remember for ALL bodybuilders, but particularly those of us who have arrived at, or even passed through the 30 mark. 

GET BIGGER SHOULDERS WITH 5 EASY MOVES

Give your shoulders a blast and get them growing again

THE PROBLEM

You train shoulders religiously each week, but you’re not making progress, you’re constantly in pain, and you’re ready to scrap shoulder work altogether.

THE SOLUTION

Most guys run into problems when they try to do too much with their shoulder workouts. They’re performing too many moves, they choose their exercises unwisely, and they don’t pay attention to balancing out the muscle groups that form their shoulders as a whole.

4 CLASSIC EXERCISES TO BUILD UP YOUR BICEPS

Apply these minor tweaks to get your arms growing 

STRAIGHT UP BICEPS

Plateaus are as much a part of the natural order of things as the sunrise and sunset (they just suck a lot more). We all have periods of stagnation, when the best we can do is maintain. That doesn’t mean you have to like it. And sometimes, it doesn’t even take that much to snap out of it.

Try these four classic exercises and apply the tweaks we explain in the exercise descriptions. These minor changes are enough to keep your muscle fibers guessing, and when your body’s guessing, it responds by growing.

8 Training Rules From the Fittest Man on Earth

Basketball and football players might fill their off-season with pampered getaways and late-night escapades, but for CrossFit's top athletes, there's no slowing down. Though the Reebok CrossFit Games just wrapped — with many coaches begging their competitors to take a week off — the athletes are already eyeing the 2016 season.

It's no different for this year's CrossFit Games champ Ben Smith. He's back to training at the gym he owns, CrossFit Krypton in Chesapeake, Virgina, as well as coaching and prepping for the unknown — a hallmark of the Games is that athletes don't know the events going into it. This year, those feats included 203-pound kettlebell carries, leg-less rope climbs, and performing hundreds of pull-ups, push-ups, and squats while wearing a weighted vest.

The Other Reason You Don't Have a Six-Pack

Throw out the weight loss diets and special machines: You have everything you need to transform your abs with just your body. The big trick to getting glossy abs is pretty simple: you need release the restrictions in your abs that keep them from working properly, then activate those muscles, and finally you can strengthen the specific muscles you need.

In order to develop those strong abdominals you need to start with the innermost layer, your transverse abdominis (TA). In theory, this muscle should be working all the time. It should stabilize you before you move and is used when you breathe properly. However, when there are restrictions in your hip flexors and tightness in your abdominals insertions, it is unable to work properly.