Get Dem Big Quads with Front Squats

Hey Guys! Welcome back to one of the best fitness and supplement blogs around. Today we will be bringing you another exercise, the Front Squats. Our favourite exercise after the dead lift.Front squats are great for putting on size on the quads and it is also a form of a corrective exercise. Front squats improves posture, weaknesses and increase strength tremendously. 

Type: Strength
Main Muscle Worked: Core, Quadriceps 
Other Muscles: Calves, Forearms, Glutes, Hamstrings.
Equipment: Barbell
Mechanics Type: Compound
Level: Advanced
Force: Push

How to do it?!
Here's an instructional video from Chris Jones representing PhysiquesOfGreatness
 

 The Basics:
1. Rack the bar on your power rack and set it at a height slightly lower then your shoulders.
2. Slam some weights on that bar or no weights if you are just starting out this exercise.
3. Rest the bar on your shoulders, more specifically between your delts and traps or on your clavicle.
4. Lift it off the rack with your hands only supporting the bar not holding it with your hands. Even if your hands are off the bar, the bar should stay in place. U can chose to use the Olympic style of supporting the bar or crossing your hands on the bar. I prefer the Olympic style.
5. Squat. You can do ass to the grass (optional). Focus on your quads, emulate a sitting movement and when you get low enough,, just stand back up.

Comment:
This is a great exercise but like the dead lift you'll be able to snap some shit up if you do this wrong.
Get your form down with just the bar. My team and I incorporate this exercise even in our warmups and we use this to improve out strength/power.

    We personally prefer the front squat to the regular back squat where the bar is on your spine. Reasons being you are forced to be in a thoracic extension( extension of the chess up and forward). Most athletes, including us,  have very tight or tonic biceps, pectorals, neck muscles due to sitting too much, overuse of the computer and pure laziness; thus we tend to hunch our back regularly. So, using this exercise, we are able to force thoracic extension and force our chest up. Improves posture!!
   
    Second reason why we prefer this as to back squats is the fact that we put a shit load of weights on our spine. Call this bro-science but we're definitely afraid that we're going to snap our spines and we wont be able to compete in our competitions, worst we'll be paralyzed. Enough Said! 

   Last reason would be that since we do a lot of clean and jerks, power cleans, snatches and dead lifts, we would use the front squats to strengthen the quads and core. This is so that we can excel in the clean and jerk and snatch.

Precautions
This exercise is not suitable for whoever with back problems. Even if you have a healthy back, you should practice the movements and get the form right with an empty bar because you might just snap some shit up.
Never ever slouch or arch your lower back. It puts a lot of unwanted stress on your back.
Keep your chest up or maintain thoracic extension at all times!   

Here are some additional videos regarding the front squats. 

 Both of these videos are from Elliott Hulse's Strength Camp

Video 1: Why front squats are better for athletes

Video 2:How to fix your front squat

These above are great videos that will help you in your front squats.


We at Get Dem Big love this exercise and we recommend this to any one who want to get big ans strong


GET DEM BIG with FRONT SQUATS!!

Good luck

Sincerely
Dom
#strength4good

Get Dem Big is in no affiliation with any of the advertisers/products/brands. We are just giving our honest feedback and sharing our experiences.We will not be held liable for the actions of readers.

Get Dem Big Weekends Motivation Series 2

 Hey Guys!!

This is a great motivational video made by the guys at ImPossible Training. This video is simply amazing. I thought this video showcased the human capability to do whatever it takes to succeed not only in your workouts but in your life as well. These words can be associated with your life's achievements and failures. Forcing you to be humble in your achievements and learn from your failures. I've transcribed the speech for this video. check it out. 

"Imagine if you were blind. 
Complete darkness, no colors, no view, no beauty.
Just pitch black. 
If you were blind ask yourself how badly you'd want to SEE. 
If pushing yourself to your limits could give you sight? 
Would you do it?
If there was a cure would you let anything stand in your way?
Would you risk the haters and the critics to see again?
Do you really want to succeed? 
Would you really care if they mocked you, laughed at you, pointed at you or bad mouthed you? 
Would you be concerned about your extreme goals?
Or just embrace the extreme work
What if you had to learn hurt, trust pain and embrace struggle, would you still be concerned with being realistic? 
Would you still figure your odds and calculate your chances? 
If you had to spend more time, planning your workouts and less time planning your weekends, would it be a tough choice?
If the cure for blindness was humility and pain, would you go for it?
If the cure for blindness was looking foolish, would you risk it? 
If seeing again took a fight, would you start swinging? 
If the cure was doing things you can’t do, would you attempt them? 
If a few extra hours, a few more drops of sweat and a little bit more blood was all it took would you claim your sight? 
Do you really want to succeed?
Then choose to be blind and do whatever it takes to see, because if you don't then you're just blind anyway."


      I thought that this video brought out a creative perspective on what we are willing to do to succeed in life. Using the analogy of equating blindness and the lengths we are willing to go to to get our sight back is with what we are willing to do to succeed in life. Because if we do nothing, then nothing's going to change. If you are reading this then I believe that you still have your sight. What if you go blind? (God forbid) You know the wonders and the blessing of having your sight. Wouldn't you fight or die trying to regain your sight?

We at Get Dem Big wants you to have what you deserve and not settle for what you don't.

Have a great weekend and GET DEM BIG!!

Sincerely, 

Get Dem Big Team

#strength4good

Get Dem Big is in no affiliation with any of the advertisers/stores/shops/products/brands. We are just giving our honest feedback and sharing our experiences 

Get Dem Big Weekends!!

As you can see, it's the end of the week and some of y'all think it's time to partay.

Well, why don't you try hitting the bars this weekend. You might like it.

 

This could be The Weekend you change your life for the better and be The Strongest Version of YOURSELF (Elliott Hulse). You've got to start somewhere sometime, and you should start NOW because

 

Do what you have to do to be the best that you can be. Be a person who inspires, motivates and push others to their maximum potential. You can't do that until you start doing it yourself. So Start NOW

This is for YOU!!

Have a great weekend and do something to change you life and start changing others. 

We here at Get Dem Big will bring you a weekend that is meant for your motivation. 

Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow!!



Sincerely
Get Dem Big team.

#strength4good.

Get Dem Big is in no affiliation with any of the advertisers/products/brands. We are just giving our honest 

feedback and sharing our experiences.We will not be held liable for the actions of readers.All pictures are from 

bodybuilding motivation and gym freaks facebook page.

Get Dem Big with Big Plans

What's up guys!!

 I'm going to touch on Big Plans particularly to Gem Dem Big.


Believe it or not we have plans for everything, life, money, partners, friends, career and the other nine yards. Unfortunately, to get in shape and healthy you'll need a plan also; Fortunately the PLAN to get in shape and healthy is or it should be a simple plan. Life is complicated enough with us living other people's plan or your other plans going to the dump.  Speaking of plans, nowadays if you're young, still figuring out what you want to do and you go up to someone saying you have NO plans. This would be their reaction man.

No future plans??!! You're about to cross some fuckin' lines

So, I'm going to give you the simplest plan for your complicated life to get in shape and be healthy.

Here are 3 things that you need to plan for yourself.

1) Plan your workout time. Come one, 45mins to 1 hour a day is only 5% of your day. You can definitely hit the gym or get your ass down to a home workout. Simplest thing, start walking for 20 minutes every single day or start with 10 pushups everyday. Small daily improvements will lead to long term results. I have my proper workouts 3 times a week about an hour every session.


2) Plan your workouts. Alright when you're in the gym, you'd really want to optimize your whatever time you have allocated in the gym. Go in, hit it hard and leave. Keep the rest time short too. I still remember that 1 semester in school, Mondays training which focuses on my back and core strength.. My class ends at 3.00pm, I head to the gym at 4.45 pm because the gym opens at 5pm. I leave that place at 6.15 on the dot. Why? Because I planned out what I wanted to do and I had my trials and errors to figure out what's best for me and I optimized it. So, as an example of what I did. 

6 sets of 10s: Deadlift, Seated V-bar cable rows and Lat pulldowns . Back to back on all this bitches with absolutely no rest. After I complete all 3 of this shit. I counted to 30 and restart until I finished. After these shit I go on to other shit like my arms for example until I did my time or until it was 6.15 at least.

This is why planning your workouts is important because similarly we don't have all the time in the world to train. I  had some other shit i had to deal with at 7.00pm so I get my shit done! I did this for 6 months and I rarely miss my workout. In fact, i had this situation at every session. I only have an hour in the gym and that's about it. I went through it with a mindset of knowing what to hit before going to the gym.


3) Plan your food. Your diet is important when you're raining, you need the energy and calories to get you big. Based on what are your goals are. if you want to bulk then get yourself a shit load of food in you. Your food can be simple. It should consist of Carbs, protein and vegetables. Simple as that.. Here are some videos that has some good shit about your food intake and how you can prepare them ahead of time.
BULKING ON A BUDGET #4 - Jr. Bodybuilder Nick Wright - MEAL PREP 
or you can check this cool rendition from sixpackshortcuts Healthy Meal Time (Epic Meal Time Parody) 


From my experience, I live on campus, so I can't prepare my own food  What I did was go the food stalls before lunch hour, brought my Tupperwares because I am environmental friendly and bought my food. A whole days worth of food. I had 1 cup of white rice( coz I couldn't get brown rice), lots of veges and lots of meat. (any kind of meat) . I ate about 4 meals a day and I drink 2 shakes. I spend about RM15.00 a day for these kinda food everyday. I want to get big so no excuses.     

This is a sample of one of my meals

So here are my simple plans to get in shape and for my case I want to get big. Planing is important in every aspects of our lives. This includes fitness. Like it or nor if you want to get the body you always wanted, you need to plan so that you can optimize your time and potential. It doesn't have to be perfect, as long as you have a rough plan, DO IT! Of course it plans will blow up in your face! When that happens don't just abandon the plan! F**k your plans up. Make it do-able for you, improvise and adapt it to your life. Make it work for you!

 

Make sure this time you do it for yourself. You plan for yourself. You owe it to yourself!!

Paste this on your wall and keep all these in mind!!

With everything that is happening in your life, I dare say that these are the simplest plans and one of the best things you can plan for YOURSELF. NO EXCUSES


Get Dem Big with Big Plans

Sincerely 

Dom
#strength4good
Get Dem Big is in no affiliation with any of the advertisers/stores/shops/products/brands. We are just giving our honest feedback and sharing our experiences

Get Dem Big ARMS

What's up people!!

Today, the topic is arms!! Get dem big ARMS. I love big arms as much as the next guy. I think the arms are the show-off muscle. It's all about the size of dem arms hanging out of the car window. I like working out my arms a little bit after training but Fridays are the days where I go full throttle on my arms to make dem big. Here are some of my personal favorite exercises that give me good pumps.

For Biceps:
1) Under-Hand Pull ups : This is my absolute favourite. Hook yourself on a bar, shoulder length, with your palms facing you. Then just pull yourself up. Sounds easy and sweet. You can do a variation with a close grip or shoulder length grip or even one handed. Best of all, equipments are free. Just go the park and latch yourself to a swing set and you're good to go. This exercise works your core, lats, biceps and shoulders. It's a great compound movement, keep in mind that you have to make sure that you feel the contraction at your biceps to maximize the work.

2) Seated Dumbbell Curls : Seat on a bench, pick the dumbbells up and start curling. Don't rock too much and make sure you squeeze at the top till your biceps feel like exploding.      

3) Rope Hammer Curls : Love this shit. See the picture below. remember to squeeze at the top. I always get a great pump at the end of this work set.

 

4) 21s: This is also an awesome shit. Your Biceps will feel like it's gonna explode. I personally like to use the curl bar instead of the straight bar. I feel that the curl bar lets me isolate the biceps more by reducing the use of the forearms. What I like to do is 3 sets of close grip and 3 sets of wide grip. Target the biceps like crazy.

5)  Overhead Rope Cable Presses: I usually do this at the end of my arm workout as a burnout and I really like doing this. Here's how I do it, since there are no pictures to illustrate. At the triceps pulldown station, reach for the rope, sit your ass down and with your arms suspended over your head, start curling. The motion is using your biceps to pull the weight down to your back. This is the shortened position of your biceps. If you were to do it right now, you'll fell the tension on your biceps and it feels like it's cramping up. Give if a good squeeze and go easy on the weights, because it may cause cramping. It's a nice way to end my biceps.   



For Triceps:
1) Dips: Absolute favourite exercise. This is one of those exercise that you can do anywhere. At a park, at home or at the gym. The one in the picture, I think is the best dips workout. It hits your chest, triceps and a little shoulders. I usually feel it in these three muscle groups when I do it. 

  

2) Overhead Triceps Dumbbell Extensions: This is some great stuff. Just get a dumbbell, old it above your head, descend your forearm to the back of your head at 90 degrees angle and extend it upwards. It's that simple. You can do it one handed or use both your hands. I like the latter.  You can do this seated or standing. Either way, you'll get some good action on your triceps.

3) Overhead Triceps Rope Extension: This is similar to the Overhead Triceps Dumbbell Extensions. Now you're using a rope. This is a great exercise. Really focuses on shaping that triceps of yours by pulling that rope apart. I have to say you'll get more concentrated pumps with this compared to the dumbbell extensions.

4) Skull Crushers : These are also a great exercise for the triceps. Do it as shown in the picture.This shit hits triceps hard and give some tension to your core, front delts and a little bit of chest. 

 

5) V-bar or Straight bar Triceps Pushdown: Grab a V-bar or a straight bar, hook it to the machine and start pushing away. However, I see this a lot in the gym, many rock their elbows back and forth and this doesn't target the triceps much, you're just working everywhere else but the triceps. The triceps don't get contracted properly. The thing is to keep your elbows by your side and really pushing and squeezing the triceps at the bottom. if you feel like it's gonna cramp, you're doing it right. Once the triceps are fully contracted, bring your hands back leaving the elbows in place but your forearms should be roughly 45 degrees from your biceps.

     Here are my 10 favourite exercises for arms. What I like to do is do them in superset or I do these exercises back to back. For example I do Under-Hand Pull ups and Dips back to back and that is considered 1 working set. With no nest in between. Non-stop action pumps. The reason I do this is to eliminate/tire out the opposing muscle so that the muscle I'm targeting is not depending on the opposing muscle at all.

    As you can see above I numbered the exercises number 1 for biceps goes with number 1 for triceps and the following numbers. I usually go in this order guys but I do switch it up. Do what feels good for you. I usually do about 5 sets of 8-10 repetitions for heavy week and 5 sets of 15-20 on my light weight week.I like to leave the gym and live my weekends with a pair of pumped up arms. 

Owhh yeah!! I forgot about forearms. I don't usually work forearms because it's already included in my power cleans, deadlifts and my other strength workout. I lift heavy ass weights. Since clean and jerk I cant use wrist straps, I can't start using them pre-competition. However I do do something to strengthen my grip. I get my ass to a pull up bar and I just put my fingers around it and hang there for a minute or more. I also loosen and squeeze my grip while I'm suspended. It pumps up the forearms real fast. It's some good pumps right there!! 

Reminder; Work both your biceps and triceps, in fact work on your triceps more because the triceps istwo thirds of your arm. SO Get Dem Swole and Get DEM BIG ARMS!!

Thanks for reading thus far. We have more good stuff coming soon. 

Sincerely
Dom

#strength4good

Get Dem Big is in no affiliation with any of the advertisers/stores/shops/products/brands. We are just giving our honest feedback and sharing our experiences 

Get Dem Big Body Fat??

Hey good people,

I got a good question from a dude at the gym. He asked me how to get big and gain muscles fast. I think this question is all over the internet and youtube. He could just google it and tonnes of answers will appear, magically.Anyways, I would like to put my thoughts out there as well.

     First off, getting "BIG", this is on basically everyone's mind when they hit the gym. One thing that people don't usually get is, what is big? Being muscular like Ronnie Coleman is big, heck he's freaking huge, and then there is being fat, which is also big.

    For a skinny person, or an Ectomorph if you will. Generally skinny, fast metabolism, and a classic hard gainer. For this kind of person, getting big is to hit the gym but more importantly EAT. For Asians, we typically have 3 large meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Well here's the million dollar secret to get bigger!! Are you ready? Bump up your meals up to 6 or 7 times a day. Sounds crazy?? Hey you wanna get big, got to EAT BIG TO GET BIG man. Of course I'm not saying that your all of your 6 to 7 meals have to be as big as your meals 3 times a day. Hell NO, you would explode by the end of the day. Have 6 to 7 small meals, your meal size should probably be your fist size or slightly over. You want to some math? Here's some math for your meals.

Assume your Basic Metabolic rate (MR) is about 2000J

This is when you have your 3 meals per day. Lets say that per meal, you're eating 600 calories per meal. Therefore;

1 meal = 600 cal
3 meals= 1800cal

So by the end of the day, after all that 3 meals, you still have a remaining of 200 from your metabolic rate. Guess where it goes. It consumes your stored fats or worst, it consumes muscles.  

Now if you have 6 meals per day. 400 cals per meal

1 meal=400cal
6 meals= 2400 cals.

With 400 cals remaing in your body, you're gold man.


      With these 6-7 meals a day will be a shock to your metabolism. Since your eating more frequent than usual, your metabolism has to keep up with you. Someone actually told me that doing this will cause your metabolism to be tired because of the constant eating and thus your metabolism can die. Bullshit!! Eating 6-7 time at a frequency of 2-2.5 hours interval will cause your MR to be at a constant rate throughout the day. Plus if your metabolism dies, you die. Your metabolism will be "tired" and die if you constantly eat shit(unhealthy foods)  all the time. Your meals should be simple consisting of veges, carbs and protein. Personally, my meals are green veges, chicken breast/beef/fish and brown rice/potatoes. That/s it, simple stuff man. Life is complicated enough, make other things simple.

     What skinny guys eat is a different story. You can choose between a clean bulk or a partially dirty bulk. I will never recommend a Full Dirty Bulk because you will suffer. Clean Bulk consist of healthy clean foods like what I stated in the last paragraph, green veges, chicken breast/beef/fish and brown rice/potatoes or a partially dirty bulk which is still eating what is stated but you have several cheat meals throughout the week. Maybe 6-8 meals out of the 42 meals per week are Big Macs with fries or mac and cheese. You know, just eating whatever that is in front of your face.

To make it short if you want to gain weight, just google a calculator for your Basic Metabolic Rate, calculate your BMR and add in a another 400 to 500. Don't go above that.


So here's the rational of doing the above. you want to get a BIG BODY. Well the truth is, you won't get big with muscles alone, muscles don't grow like mushrooms. Arnold Schwarzenegger once said that if you gain 10lbs(5kg) of muscle a year, you're doing everything right. That means eating clean, sleeping more than 8 hours per day and constantly working out throughout the whole year. Yup, you and me ain't doing this right now. That's why we need the help of FAT to appear bigger. You think by drinking all those mass gainers is gonna get you 10lbs of muscles. Hell NO, Drinking those will get you 9lbs of fat and 1lbs of muscle. Therefore, increasing the amount of fat in your body will definitely make you bigger.


    The above is the eating part, now comes the muscles. It's much easier to explain. The muscles in the body only respond to one thing, stress. So with weight training, you are stressing the muscles, so the muscles respond by getting bigger and stronger after every session. Now, imagine your muscle is like a balloon, you blow a balloon, it get bigger, that's how a balloon respond to stress. Blowing a balloon is like your weight training, you put stress on the muscles. Then the air that goes into the balloon is like your blood pumping into the muscles filling it up with oxygen and nutrients. That's when you'll feel the pump. How does it respond? Both the balloon and your muscles increase in volume. This the famous PUMP  that you feel in the muscles. The tightness and pain you feel. This is where the phrase "No Pain No Gain" comes into play. The pump will make your muscles fuller, engorged and bigger. You will be SWOLE!! The balloon, once you fill it with air, it will deflate so will your muscles once you "lose" the pump, guess what, it "deflates' as well. Difference with muscles are that muscles rebuild, grow stronger, grow thicker with every weight training. Balloons Don't. So NEVER STOP HITTING THE WEIGHTS and you'll SEE and FEEL the RESULTS.

Next time, I'll probably touch on strategic muscles to build to look or appear bigger.

Train Hard, Eat Harder. 

Sincerely,
Eugene

#strength4good #eatbigtogetbig

      

Get Dem Big with Universal Nutrition Creatine

What's up people!! We have a supplement review for you and today we're bringing Universal Nutrition's Creatine

Product: Universal Nutrition's Creatine

Ratings: 10/10

Type :Creatine

General overview: Check out the nutritional facts here

There's 200 servings per container. This is a simple supplement. all you need to know is that this product contains only creatine monohydrate and this has the Creapure label on it. You know it's good product if it's one of those German shit. 

 

Instructions: 

5 grams in a beverage of your choice, shake it up and chug it down. Do not exceed the recommended serving size of 5g per day. 

Personal comment:

Creatine Monohydrate is the purest form of creatine out there. It's the must studied supplement out there. You can check it out in my previous blog post here.

 

I like this product because it's cheap and it does increase my energy. I find that i can hit an extra 2 reps to the point of failure and I also noticed that my muscles are fuller. The weights on my lifts also increased at a slightly faster rate compared to when I was not on creatine. I like this stuff. On my off days I use it in the morning while on my training days I use it post workout. The best part I'm paying a reasonable price for a good product.

Taste, mix-ability and texture : 

This product is unflavored and honestly you dont have to get the flavored ones which cost way more. I'm living on a tight budget and I dont' want to spend more on the flavored ones. This stuff does not dissolve easily. You have to shake it like it's your bitch. It may get a bit gritty. 

 

*you can get a measuring spoon at your local super market. Get the cheap ones, no need to be too fancy. Measurement are the same everywhere. 

Where can you get it? 
I got this at Musclemania Club for RM70.00 for 500g and I think it is a good price. Some brands has it at RM70.00 for only 300g.  


Sincerely, 
Dom 
#strength4good #getdembig

Get Dem Big is in no affiliation with any of the advertisers/stores/shops/products/brands. We are just giving our honest feedback and sharing our experiences