Stew Smith Fitness News

Humans Are Experts at Making Mistakes!Learn from Them and Grow We are all human so making mistakes is a part of life - learning from those mistakes you have made as well as those mistakes by others around you is the key to growth. In this podcast, Jeff Nichols of PerformanceFirstUS.com and I discuss some of the training mistakes that are commonly done in the weight room at every level and age.  Depending on your goals, you may have a tendency to want to over train especially if in the special ops level of fitness required to reach goals.  Here...

What is Optimal? You and Your Efforts Determine What Works for You Best When we are training for a specific goal, we seek programming and personalized workouts that we hope will yield optimal results. Typically, most programming can yield above average results if consistently applied into a long-term system of proven applications, but what is the optimal method for you, may need some changes for others to see the same results. These improvements come through personally testing and evaluating different methodologies, training systems, and individual workouts as well. As a trainer for men and women who seek advanced levels of...

Many people look for information on the internet and that is great as the internet has long been dubbed the Information Super Highway. Google and other search engines can help you with 99% of the effort, but when asking someone online for help by email, DM, IM, or other methods, you may want to take a lesson from the following question types of questions: First, here is what NOT to do: Do not ask for tips, tricks, secrets for passing BUD/S, special ops training or any training for that manner. This is just a lazy question as I will answer,...

The Moment of Truth Just You And Your Will How Bad Do You Want It?  This question is not properly answered until fully tested. There is a moment that occurs when you are tired, over-stressed, body aching, heart pounding, gasping to catch your breath, muscles failing that a voice talks to you. The tone of what is said by that voice depends on only one thing - your will. That moment that a decision has to be made. That decision is - do I stay or do I go? Do I suck it up or do I stop this pain...

Pullups (and dips too) are considered the heavy weight lifting of the calisthenics world as 100% of your body weight will be placed on a group of muscles and joints.  Being able to move with these exercises start with a basis of strength, but doing multiple sets and repetitions of these movements takes a strength exercises and requires it to become an endurance exercise - muscle stamina. That is the process to getting your first pullup and your 20th pullup.  There are some factors that play into successful pullup improvement as well as alternatives to pullups when you cannot do...