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Quick Post: 4 of the Best Deadlift Accessory Exercises

The deadlift is a fantastic strength exercise in its own right, but after a certain amount of progress, you will need to supplement it with other lifts to keep getting stronger. This is where deadlift accessory exercises become an essential part of your strength training programme.

How to Include Deadlift Accessory Exercises in Your Programme

These accessory exercises will help you rectify the weak links in your deadlifting game and strengthen important muscle groups. The downside to this is that these exercises will be hitting the same positions and muscle groups as deadlifts. This means you won’t be able to train every exercise on this list at the same time and deadlift heavy; you’ll have to choose what you want to focus on.

In the breakdown below, I’ll discuss when to use these accessory exercises to improve your deadlifting ability.

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The Truth About Pullup Training That Will Supercharge Your Progress

I started this blog to cover all things related to strength and gym confidence; well, pullup training certainly delivers both! It doesn’t matter if you can actually do pullups. What matters is that you’re working on lifting your body using your upper body pulling strength.

For these reasons, improving pullup strength is one of the most common goals people enquire about when they start training with me. Pullup training will help you improve your grip strength, pulling strength, core strength and more.

There’s just one problem. As pullup goals became more popular, every trainer (myself included) raced online to demonstrate our favourite pullup accessory exercises. This left the public with a library of exercises, but no guidance for putting them in a training programme.

By Becca Matimba on Unsplash

It’s like having a pile of bricks but no blueprint for the house you want to build. Exercises on their own don’t get you results; a good training programme does! Today’s video covers the programming mistake that so many people make when trying to train for pullup strength.

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4 Tips That Will Transform Your Sports Performance

I’ve always been fascinated by the process of training people to improve their sports performance. My involvement in strength and conditioning began in 2011 and I was reading books on the subject long before that. I’ve identified some universal behaviours that you should follow if you want to improve performance in your sport of choice.

running
By Sporlab on Unsplash

While there is an abundance of knowledge in professional sport, the information just doesn’t reach those who participate at amateur or recreational levels. And yet, it isn’t just pro athletes that want to improve their sports performance.

If you want to improve your game in your chosen sport, then this video is for you. In five minutes I’ll go through 4 things you can do to go further in your sport. These tips aren’t overly expensive, complicated, or time-consuming, but they will help. Some of the tips are quite practical, whereas others will encourage you to review certain aspects of your current training regimen.

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Be Your Own Personal Trainer for Better Fitness Results

It’s not always easy to find a personal trainer you match well with, but that shouldn’t stop you from getting fitness results.

Having a personal trainer is proven to improve training consistency and help you reach your fitness goals (for more on that, you should see what my past and current clients had to say about their training experience).

You may not be able to completely replace a professional personal trainer, but there are a number of PT habits you can copy to boost your own gym performance and results.

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5 Best Exercises for TRX Training – Your Questions Answered

When it comes to selecting training equipment, I absolutely love anything that is simple to set up and use. That’s why, when suspension training equipment like the TRX started becoming common in gyms, I set out to learn a variety of effective TRX exercises that could help my clients achieve results.

This list of my top 5 TRX exercises is not exhaustive, but hopefully there will be one or two exercises you haven’t tried before. I’ll also answer some of the common questions about suspension training.

By Lawrence Wilcox on Unsplash

Note: I am not affiliated with TRX or any brand of suspension training equipment, and am not incentivised to promote them.

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The Complete Gym Motivation Round-Up

When I started Ready Steady Strong in 2021, one of my first projects was a 5-part series of blogs on gym motivation. Each part in the series covered aspect of gym motivation and the mistakes I frequently see. I’m proud of the series, but in hindsight, it was a long read!

By Alexander Redl on Unsplash

Fast-forward to 2023, and it’s time to streamline this topic with some simple solutions to your gym motivation problems. We’ve all wrestled with a lack of motivation when it comes to training. However, over 13 years of training people, I’ve see what works and what doesn’t when trying to overcoming a lack of fitness motivation.

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The Best Shape of Your Life: Ways to Define Your Fitness in the New Year

As an experienced personal trainer in London, I meet plenty of new clients this time of year who tell me they want to be fitter than they’ve ever been before. But getting into the best shape of your life isn’t a great goal to set.

Whether it’s a goal for your new years resolution or any other time of year, success requires two things:

  1. A clear understanding of what you want and why;
  2. A structured plan of how to get there.

I’ve written more about point 2 here, so for this article I’d like to focus on getting specific.

gym focus
By Jon Tyson on Unsplash

No one else can tell you what your goal should be. Goals based on external pressure tend not to be very powerful motivators. That being said, you might still be struggling for inspiration. I’ve made this list of potential fitness goals that might help you narrow things down.

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What Comes Next After Setting New Years Resolutions?

Everyone “knows” that new years resolutions are meant to be given up on within two weeks of the new year. In fact, new years resolutions are often met with such scepticism and negativity that it’s a wonder the tradition still persists. But if you think about the pattern that leads to making new resolutions, it makes sense that these goals should fail most of the time.

Goals usually require 2 things to succeed:

  • A high level of motivation;
  • A sensible, structured plan.

Unfortunately, when we make our new year plans, we’re riding high on the spirit of the season. Motivation is so high that we don’t even bother to make plans. Why bother with planning your approach when you feel like you could just run through every obstacle in your path?

By Ivan Pergasi on Unsplash

New Years Resolutions aren’t just for New Year

As I’ve written before, motivation is constantly in flux. This means that, no matter who you are, you will inevitably hit a period of low motivation. The Christmas/New Year season is so different to our usual routine that there’s no way you can maintain that level of enthusiasm all year round! So when your motivation crashes, you shouldn’t feel like you’ve failed. You DEFINITELY shouldn’t feel like your resolutions were a waste of time.

Those January 3rd vibes. By Christian Erfurt on Unsplash

However, this inevitable crash is exactly why you need to make a plan now. This plan should help you mentally prepare for the obstacles that sit between you and your goals.

Think of goal-setting like a marriage. You can have a lovely wedding full of celebrations, partying, and teary-eyed speeches, but if you can’t handle the bad times with your partner then you won’t make it past the honeymoon.

With that in mind, here are some steps for making ironclad new years resolutions.

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Three Fitness Lessons I Learned This Year

2022 is almost over. As cliché as it may be, I always like reflecting at this time of the year – I find it’s a useful way of remembering what you’ve achieved, what you’ve learned, and what to aim for in the new year.

I’ve been quiet on social media for about 2 months whilst writing and filming stuff for next year. I may not be regularly posting on Instagram in the new year, so if you’d still like to stay up to date with Ready Steady Strong in the future, you can:

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Quick Post: Lessons I Learned During My Gym Comeback

Just before the COVID lockdowns started, I weighed around 90kg and was 5 weeks out from a kickboxing fight. I really felt like I was in the best condition of my life in terms of strength, fitness, and health.

At the end of the last lockdown I weighed 107kg, was exhausted after 30 minutes of shadowboxing, and my calves/knees hurt just walking to work. I was keen on getting back to the gym, but also a little daunted by the challenge.

By Danielle Cerullo on Unsplash

I don’t tell this story often because I don’t want it to sound like some kind of horror story. I believe it’s totally normal for your relationship with fitness to change during a significant life event. Nonetheless I think this story holds some useful lessons for anyone thinking of going back to the gym after a long time off.

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