*To build muscle, you have to either lift heavy weights or you need to push your moderately heavy/light sets close to failure. The lighter the weight, the more reps you would need to perform.

 I get very, very bored trying to finish a set of 15 reps. Inside, I am throwing a temper tantrum that would make a 2 year-old stop and stare. So, most of my sets are moderately heavy and performed in the 6-12 rep range.

 You need to spread your loading out if you want to stay healthy; you cant try to set a 5 rep max on everything if you want your body to feel good in your 30s, 40s and 50s. You can spend more time in a rep/weight scheme that you enjoy and that’s what I would recommend if you want to keep things interesting and motivating.

 *One of my athletes brought me a homemade batch of pickles last week and they have been a lifesaver in this heat. I almost forgot how beneficial pickles are this time of year for preventing sodium loss. These kids might actually be keeping me alive in this brutal stretch of 95+ degree days.

 *Try this the DB Bench variation on your next upper body day. Pick a weight that allows 8-12 reps of an incline DB bench and perform a set. Immediately after your final rep, adjust the bench to a flat setting and perform a set of 8-20. We have used this a bit lately and people seem to enjoy it.

 *You can learn a lot about the commitment and the patience necessary to change your body from fitness models.

 Start with the before pictures and scroll through each year; you might not notice too much of a change year to year but it all starts to add up as he or she builds their training and nutrition capitol.

 Check out the 4-5 training sessions they put in every week. The consistency. The year round commitment. These people don’t miss workouts. They train when they are motivated and they train when they are unmotivated.

 View their Instagram stories and see how they are eating. The meal prep. They might experiment with different nutritional protocols but they stick to the plan. They don’t bounce from diet to diet looking for the next quick fix.

 It is a mindset. If you really want to change your body, you have to be consistent and brutally patient.

 I admire those sick bastards!

 *Conditioning isn’t just going for a run. Energy is produced aerobically or anaerobically depending on the intensity of the activity.

 A fast, explosive action, such as dunking a basketball, sprinting for a lose ball or a football running back cutting to avoid a tackle relies on the anaerobic energy system. As you can see in the picture above, the anaerobic energy system provides over 70 percent of the energy used in most team sports. Seems redundant to say that athletes need to be anaerobically conditioned.

 The keys to improving this physical quality are intense, maximal efforts followed by complete rest. Sprint 10 yards with maximal intent and then rest for 60 seconds, repeat for 8 reps. Push the pace and teach your body how to move explosively. The typical markers of a quality conditioning session; fatigue, athletes gasping for air are the exact opposite of how the athletes should feel after a training session.

 As soon as we normalize high effort, long recovery conditioning our athletes will become much more explosive on the field!