Category Archives: Weight Training For Men

Symmetrical Bodies Are More Attractive To The Opposite Sex

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Scientists using hi-tech body scanners have discovered that people with more symmetrical bodies are more attractive to the opposite sex.

The research backs up previous findings that symmetrically proportioned faces are more attractive and suggests that our brains are hard-wired to find symmetry sexy in a potential partner. In our evolutionary past, symmetry may have been an honest signal of flawless development and health.

“It is widely believed that human beings are attracted to one another as a result of genotype and phenotype quality – in other words, their prospect as a mate who will yield higher quality offspring for the chooser,” said Dr William Brown, an evolutionary psychologist at Brunel University who led the study.

“Your body proportions, shape and stature are signals that conspicuously advertise your good development or health and therefore the degree to which you are a desirable reproductive partner. In many species fewer departures from perfect symmetry are associated with good development, health and reproductive success.”

The theory is that disturbances in the womb, infections, poor nutrition and genetic flaws all increase your degree of asymmetry and so good proportions are an honest indication of healthy development and hence a partner’s ability to produce healthy children.

Brown’s team asked 40 men and 37 women to strip down to their underwear and enter a 24-camera body scanner. The device rapidly takes hundreds of measurements of the subject’s body allowing the researchers to build up a 3D image. They also calculated a composite measure of symmetry from the hundreds of minute symmetry differences recorded by the cameras.

The team showed each of these images to 87 evaluators who rated them for attractiveness. The researchers were particularly interested in how body asymmetry would affect the ratings, so to avoid adding another factor to the evaluators’ decision, the team presented each image with the head of the subject removed.

The evaluators preferred more symmetrical body shapes in both men and women. “They are choosing individuals who would have evidence for good development which means that maybe their offspring would be more healthy and have good development as well,” said Brown.

The results are reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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The Importance Of Proper Form

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Proper-form


Prevents injuries

One of the most important reasons for maintaining proper form is to prevent injuries. If you are lifting a lot of weight, your body is likely to become slightly misaligned, which can place your muscles, joints and tendons in awkward positions that could potentially cause strains or tears. It is best to ease up on the weight if it means you are better able to maintain proper form.

Ensures correct muscle targeting

Since many weightlifting exercises are targeted toward specific muscle groups, a lack of good form can cause you to work out a completely different muscle or to strain the muscle you were targeting. Proper form, on the other hand, ensures optimal results in the correct muscle group.

Helps maintain proper breathing

Proper breathing is essential in resistance training exercises because it helps you generate more force and reduces the chance of heart problems or severe increases in blood pressure. When you use correct form, you will find it easier to move the air in and out of your lungs, which will also help you focus your attention on the task at hand.

Enables you to lift more weight

In order for you to lift the maximum possible weight, your muscles need to be in the ideal position to generate force. When you begin to move out of alignment, you place your muscles at unnatural angles, decreasing their functional capability. By maintain proper form, you will be able to lift a larger amount of weight, which will translate into more visible results in a shorter period of time.

Reduces unnecessary stabilizing actions

When you use bad form, a number of muscles — predominately those in your core — must work overtime to stabilize your body and try to prevent an injury from occurring. All these actions eat up available energy and significantly reduce the effectiveness of your exercises. That means more work with less results — not and ideal situation.

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Complex Training

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Stromer-Complex-Training

Complex training is a type of weight lifting that is meant to replace your traditional cardio sessions. Because the body often shows adaptation to repetitive endurance activities, complexes allow you to overcome this barrier so you are consistently getting results from your workout. Additionally, because complexes are done using strength training exercises, there will be a better transfer to your lifting workouts as well.

Due to the manner in which complex training is performed you will be primarily focusing on the cardiovascular side of your conditioning, rather than the pure strength side. This means that while they are definitely a good addition to your lift training, complexes are by no means a replacement.

 
How do you perform complex training?

Complex training involves a number of exercises performed in succession. During this time you will need to keep the weight exactly the same so that you can move fluidly from one exercise to the next. Because of this lack of a break period, you will increase your metabolism sufficiently so that the routine is more comparable with a high intensity interval training cardio session.

After choosing the exercises that you will perform, you will want to complete all of your specified reps for one exercise and then move to the next immediately afterward. It is not an alternating type of protocol where you would perform a squat movement, then an overhead press movement, followed by another squat movement then an overhead press and so on. Rather, you would do all of your squats, then move directly into your overhead press reps.

This type of workout is incredibly demanding on the body in terms of metabolic processes and recovery, so you will definitely need to keep that in mind. The weight you are using will need to be reduced drastically from the amount you would normally lift, particularly as you are reaching the end of the complex series when both your muscular and nervous system are likely to be extremely fatigued. Don’t try and be macho for these exercises — less really is more when it comes to complexes.

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