Exercise guides
Looking for some expert points of performance? Coach planned an exercise you’ve never heard of? Want to spice up your increasingly stale shoulder days? Look no further. TrainHeroic’s exercise guides are written by expert coaches for you.
latest
Get the Most Out of Your Rowing Machine with Expert Technique
Rowers are a super common piece of exercise equipment these days. You can find them everywhere from CrossFit gyms to your corner rec center. Whether you’re a rowing machine fan or foe, knowing how to use one properly just adds to your fitness arsenal. Are you getting...
How to Progress Your Squat for Functional Strength
Squats are a hot topic in the strength and conditioning world, and that fact isn’t going away any time soon. With so many resources out there on squatting, how does a novice know where to start? Cory Caruthers is a trainer and ACSM certified Exercise Physiologist...
The Top 3 Hamstring Exercises You Can’t Afford to Skip
Your hamstrings can be easy to ignore since they’re just “back there”, but strong hamstrings are the foundation for a meaty and symmetrical posterior chain. Neglect them to your peril. Aja Campbell is a CSCS/CrossFit Coach with a decade of fitness experience. She’s...
Which Deadlift Variations Hit Your Goals?
We know deadlifts help make up the meat and potatoes of posterior chain training, but there are so many underutilized ways to pick something up from the ground. How do you know which variation to work on for maximum strength gains? Daniel Yalowitz has a background of...
How & Why to Work on Split Squats
Back squats and deadlifts get the most exposure as top posterior chain builders, but what if you have imbalances or a weaker side? Split squats are the perfect underrated movement for working on unilateral strength and size gains. Coach Ryan Johnston (MS, CSCS, USAW2)...
Points of Power: Three Key Positions to Improve Your Power Clean
Your power clean capacity says a lot about your weightlifting technique—speed, explosiveness, timing—it’s all there. What should you be focusing on to dial in your power clean skills and claim beast status? Justin Barchus, owner and head coach at Kraken Strength out...
Work on These 3 Factors for Faster Sprinting Mechanics
Depending on your sport, your sprinting capacity can make or break your athletic performance. As one of the tenets of well-rounded athleticism, speed can be a tricky thing to train unless you know what to improve. Morey Croson, head speed coach and founder of The...
Need Better Squat Depth? Try Kettlebell Goblet Squats
Your back squat is the hallmark of your lower body strength. But what if your stiff tissues and junky joints don’t let you access a deep squat range of motion? Jason Giles, owner of Iron Monkey Strength out of New York, has a lifetime of passionate dedication to...
Get Your First Pull Up With These 5 Progressions
Pull ups are your nemesis. Maybe you haven’t really tried working on them yet, because where do you even start?? Gym Jones head coach and certified bad b*tch, Cate Williams, leads you through her tactics for nailing the most-requested movement in the gym: pull ups....
Banded Back Exercises You Can Do Almost Anywhere
Pandemic isolation was a real test of our ability to adapt to a weird new workout situation. Maybe you’re still trying to figure out just how best to use the equipment you’ve got. Sari Terranova is a total supermom, CPT, and nutrition coach who introduces women and...
How to Do Leg Extensions Without a Machine
Short shorts are the new stinger tanks...rocking those big tree trunks with canyon deep cuts is a look that works on everyone! Leg extensions are a bodybuilding staple—they isolate your quads, the front-facing muscle group of your thighs, by flexing (bending) and...
Do More Face Pulls, Grow More Back
Face pulls are an uncommon pulling exercise that bodybuilders use to shape thick, meaty back muscles and healthy shoulders. Though it sounds like a weird skincare routine or something a toddler would do to get your attention, face pulls train your ability to handle...
The Ultimate Guide to Lunges: Queen of all Glute Exercises
Your glutes are the largest muscle group in your body. They’re responsible for almost everything your legs do—walking, running, jumping, squatting, lunging, and just standing upright. As far as moving through space goes, strong glutes are the bedrock of overall...
Your Guide to Russian Twists
It sounds like some kind of crazy dance move, but the Russian twist is actually a useful core exercise that challenges more than just your abs. It’s a good staple for accessory work and useful to shake up your normal routine of situps and leg lifts, which only work...
The 6 Strongman Exercises You Need To Know
Strongman training looks crazy. Huge people moving huge weights in the form of semi trucks, concrete balls, massive logs, barrels, and tractor tires—how do you even get into something like that? Maybe you've seen Strongman competitors before and have written off their...
5 Proven Ways to Boost Your Bench Press with Josh Bryant of Jailhouse Strong
Josh Bryant, owner of the hugely popular Jailhouse Strong programs, is an absolute badass in his own right. He specializes in powerlifting, powerbuilding, and coaching strength athletes to record-setting numbers. In this blog, he outlines the most reliable ways to...
Freestyle Your Chin Up Technique for a Wonder Woman Upper Bod
There’s nothing like a bodyweight calisthenic movement to put you in your place athletically. Coaches often see a recurring issue with some populations of lower-body-dominant athletes who favor squats, deadlifts, and other barbell movements that use their strongest...
4 Overlooked Glute Exercises to Mix into Your Training
Glutes and glute exercises are a hot topic these days and with good reason. As the largest muscle group in your body responsible for keeping you upright and walking, strong glutes are a pillar of overall athleticism. Since ancient Greek and Roman times, flat butts...
Upright Rows: The GOAT for Shoulder Workouts
Simply put, big shoulders are sexy. If you’re into bodybuilding, you know that your shoulders form the wide top of your hourglass or “V” shape. Having round boulder shoulders is immediately noticeable for your physique aesthetics and usually means the difference...
Front Squat How-To for Serious Muscle Density
Of all the myriad ways to squat, there’s one variation you could probably stand to do more often: front squats.Set your leg workouts on fire with the front squatFront squats challenge your body to balance weight across your shoulders (front delts) instead of behind...
8 of the Best Hamstring Exercises for Meaty Legs
Your hamstrings are not just for decoration and making yoga feel impossible. They’re essential for basically any athletic movement involving your legs—jumping, running, lunging, squatting, and picking up weight. Get stronger pulls & shaply gams with these...
Master the Push Press with these Points of performance
Massive overhead strength is a hefty goal to chase. Since it’s one of the more difficult aspects of strength to develop, holding a fat stack of plates overhead always looks impressive, feels epic, and establishes dominance over your enemies.Master the Push Press for...
5 Tips to Get Better at Strict Pull Ups
The ultimate bodyweight movement that even good athletes struggle with: pull ups. Getting your first strict pull up as a beginner is a huge accomplishment, but stringing multiple reps together is arguably just as huge. It can take time and some dedicated progressions...
Barbell Row Benefits & Points of Performance
Having a strong back translates to a ton of functional movements, but it generally means you can pick heavy things up off the floor. There are two main ways to do this: a deadlift or a row.Add Bent-Over Rows to Your Back Workouts for Serious SizeDeadlifts and clean...
Why You Should Try the Clean Grip Snatch
Snatches are hard enough as is—combining dynamic, explosive strength, speed, and timing with a mobility challenge for every major joint in your body. It can take years for an average athlete to get decently confident with full snatches and even then they’ll probably...
The Perfect Air Squat – Great Squat Mechanics for Life
One of the first movements a quality coach assesses for a new personal training client is the most basic movement in all of human physiology: the air squat. Get Good Squat Mechanics for LifeThe squat is a full-body functional movement that translates to necessary,...
Thrusters 101 an unbeatable Full-Body Exercise
Arguably the most grueling, efficient, functional full-body movement and the biggest middle finger to gravity is the thruster. Like burpees, thrusters are a very polarizing exercise—you either love them, hate them, love to hate them, or some combination of all three....
How to Master Kipping Handstand Push Ups
Handstands are a gymnastic staple, but unless you took to gymnastics as a kid, they’re not easy to learn. Holding a freestanding handstand for just one minute can take years to perfect, but even the less gymnastically-inclined athlete can learn to do handstand push...
Your Guide to a Heavy Power Clean
It’s the simplest variation of the clean and jerk. It’s also arguably the easiest place to start when dipping your toes into the Olympic weightlifting pool: the power clean. Get Faster & Stronger Under the BarPower cleans are one of the few technical lifts seen...
Deficit Deadlift Benefits & Points of Performance
From a mechanical standpoint, how can you make picking something up off the floor more challenging? An obvious answer is to increase the load—a less obvious answer is to make the floor farther away. Enter: the deficit deadlift. Deficit deadlifts are often programmed...
Goblet Squats for Spine Health & Strong Legs
Of all the myriad ways to squat, goblet squats are the best for beginners and most useful if you’re dealing with injuries. They can also help improve your hip-hinge movement patterns and absolutely blow up your posterior chain if you’re into that. (We know you...
10 Bar Muscle up Progressions
One of the most advanced gymnastics skills is now regularly taught in CrossFit classes: the muscle up. You can do them on a pull up bar or gymnastics rings; you can do them strict or with a heaving full-body kip. That is, if you can do them at all. A guide to the bar...
Single Leg Landmine Romanian Deadlift – For a pumped-up peach & stable hips
Romanian deadlifts (RDLs) are a totally underrated pulling movement that hit your glutes and hamstrings in the best way. Sometimes called stiff-leg deadlifts or straight-leg deadlifts, RDLs are an athlete’s best friend for building the kind of posterior chain that...
The Bulgarian Split Squat: the Secret Weapon to Massive Quads & Glutes
If you’ve ever attempted high volume Bulgarian split squats, you know how heart-poundingly nasty they can be. The combination of hip hinging and stabilization under load is a brutal use of your legs, glutes, and central nervous system. Master the best single-leg squat...
The Power Snatch: Improve Your Dynamic Speed & Control
We already know that the snatch is one of the most technical movements in the world of weightlifting. It combines more elements of athletics into one movement than almost any other lift: speed, coordination, strength, flexibility, power, balance, accuracy…Let's get ...
Master the Arnold Press for Sculpted Shoulders
Named after the iconic Governator himself, the Arnold press adds elements of rotation and muscle fatigue to the standard dumbbell press. It’s perfect for upper body training days and an excellent accessory piece to aid in your quest for massive big-girl boulder...
A guide to bicep workouts: curls for the girls (and guys!)
Ahh, bicep curls—the target of fit culture hater-ade since the dawn of the bro sesh. If you’re not into bodybuilding, curls seem like the ultimate useless isolation movement for the sole purpose of growing big arms and a bigger ego (à la Gaston). Bicep workouts are...
5 Advanced Plank Variations for Your Strongest Core
Author: Lily Frei
Planks are a core staple, but let’s face it—they’re boring. And for some people, they’re too easy. If you fall into that second camp, we’ve dug up some advanced plank variations to get your core working harder.
Overhead Squat Points of Performance, Benefits & Challenges
Why is the overhead squat so hard?Ask any coach worth their salt what the most challenging weight-bearing movement is for mobility and they’ll probably say overhead squats. If you want to get specific, a double kettlebell overhead squat or a close-grip overhead squat....
All the Ways to Bench Press: Incline, Decline, Flat Bench & More
Author: Lily Frei
Everyone knows the secret to big, bulging chesticles is a strong bench press. Or at least, no one with huge bench numbers has a small chest. But your standard flat bench isn’t the only way to build chest strength. In fact, if you’re leaving out a variety of forward pressing movements, you could have some holes in your fitness or physique game.
The Sumo Deadlift: How & why you should be doing them
How and why to do sumo deadlifts, plus technique for training a massively strong sumo pullPicking up something off the ground is a mechanically essential skill for humans on planet Earth. Deadlifting is considered the best test of strength for this skill, and one of...
How To Zercher Squat: One Exercise To Rule Them All
I have a secret weapon exercise that will get us really close; it has a lot of bang for its buck. It builds massive quads, big glutes, a wide back, and some awesome biceps. Exactly what every athlete needs.
TrainHeroic Instagram: For Athletes, By Athletes
Looking for some Monday motivation? How about a new training session to shake things up a bit?
TrainHeroic’s Instagram is for for athletes, by athletes. We share news and notes on the latest in the strength game, valuable training insights and tips from thought leaders in the fitness game, exercise guides, sample training sessions and more.
Follow us and join the TrainHeroic community.



DOWNLOAD
trainheroic's
free APP

Join the community
Sign up for the latest training news and updates from TrainHeroic

About TrainHeroic
Support
Made with love, sweat, protein isolate and hard work in Denver, CO
© 2021 TrainHeroic, Inc. All rights reserved.