Key Industry Terms
Spencer talks about some key industry terms. In this video Spencer explains some key terms that you need to understand when setting up your diet correctly. For example what is your basal metabolic rate (BMR)? And Spencer explains what maintenance calories are. Here is...
How To Grow Muscle
Former professional athlete and STORM MD and trainer Spencer talks about gaining muscle mass. In this video Spencer covers: 1. Why do you want to gain more muscle? 2. What are the benefits of having more muscle? 3. The various methods of gaining more muscle mass. Find...
How can my bum look bigger in this?
This week I was asked... "Does using heavier weight to train your glutes make them bigger?" Here is my response... It can do yes. For years we thought that in order for muscles to grow we needed to use a rep range of 6–12 and for the weight to be 60–75% of what you...
Your Bones are Part of Your Metabolism
Did you know your bones are metabolically active? It’s an under appreciated fact that your skeleton is part of your metabolism, albeit to a far lesser degree than muscle but it still plays a vital role. When we reach 18 years old most of our skeleton is fully...
Four Keys to Muscle Growth
Firstly why? Hypertrophy should feature in everyone’s training at some point, and the reasons why are threefold: 1. Increased muscle mass actually is associated with better health and resilience to illness. 2. Increases tensile strength (strength through your joints)....
What makes muscles get bigger?
One study by Hakkinen measured levels of hormones associated with muscle growth including insulin like growth factor, testosterone and human growth hormone during a 10 week period where participants used a number of different rep schemes. They used a single leg...
Eating to increase fitness – Advanced Nutrition Strategies
It’s pretty well known that training improves your fitness, but did you know your nutrition can also improve your fitness? No not just by dropping weight to make that run easier but by increasing the size and number of your mitochondria (sometimes referred to as the...
Get Turned On: The role of the nervous system in training
Get turned on Every now and then go heavy. When we lift weights an electrical impulse travels from our brain, through our spinal chord, along nerves and to the muscle. The muscle is made up of different types of motor unit (made up of a motor Neuron and its muscle...
Can you get stronger in your 40’s and 50’s?
Here’s a question I get asked a lot... in my view for most of us the answer is yes! Absolutely! In the first graph are the men’s world records in the snatch (a weightlifting movement) the records are for the 94kg weight class from open (any age) all the way up to 85...
Are Your Best Days Really Behind You?
Recently one of my good friends Michael at Always Wear Red (Newcastle’s rapidly expanding fashion brand) wrote a blog in response to the question “Can people ‘peak’?”… it was 6 words long, it read: “Only if you think you have.” When I start working with clients they...
Before you make goals
Just before you commit to your action plan for 2019, here are a few thoughts on motivation from me to you: 1. You need a telescope and a microscope A forward thinking dream like vision is important, but equally as important is the attention to the details that will...
5 Questions to take inventory of your training
One of the most important tasks Storm’s coaches do is to review our clients training programs to check they are optimally effective and likely to deliver what our clients want. I would encourage you to do the same, here’s how: 1. Is it actually happening? When you...
Exercise Form
When I first started training people, nearly a decade ago, I ignorantly thought, that in order to teach people how to lift I just needed to learn the positions, learn how to demonstrate the lifts and learn a script of what to say (I did say “ignorantly”). The thing...
Recoverable Volume
There is an amount of training you and I could complete today that would surpass your ability to recover fully from it before your next planned training session. That should be a universal truth we all subscribe to; but to some people that statement alone will cause...
Protein: Are You Deficient?
When we start working with new clients, whether they are focussed on losing body fat loss or gaining muscle we often find they could benefit from eating a bit more protein. Believe it or not a lot of people don't like the idea of eating more protein and are often...
Dan’s Top 10 Muscle Building Snacks
When it comes to gaining weight, it can sometimes be tough to get enough calories on board. So Dan has put together his top 10 muscle building snacks to give some quick go-to options when it comes to getting the calories in and fueling the hard work your putting in in...
The Three Fundamentals of Building Muscle, Part 3: Frequency
Training Frequency refers to how often you train a particular muscle group/movement pattern. You may have heard the bodybuilders of the ‘Golden Age’ referring to this as ‘chest day’ or ‘leg day’. Whilst training a muscle group once a week may give you the drive to...
The Three Fundamentals of Building Muscle, Part 2: Intensity
Intensity refers to the percentage of your 1 rep max on the bar. Before we get any further, no you don’t have to know your 1RM for every lift. Or any lift unless you’re not a competitive power lifter. There is an inverse relationship between intensity and...
The Three Fundamentals of Building Muscle, Part I: Volume
For the best results in training for muscle gain, there is no doubt that your training has to be dialed in. To do this, you need to be monitoring and adjusting training volume, intensity and frequency to ensure you are pushing yourself a little more each time...
Fitness Over 40- Unlocking Strength Potential
Often when I speak to people out and about they tell me they would love to lift weights but they are too old to get started. In fact even some of my personal training clients are awaiting the impending day when they start getting weaker and losing fitness despite...
Picking the Right Online Personal Trainer for You
"And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities" ~ Haruki Murakami With almost infinite options; here are the top points to consider when selecting the person responsible for improving your health and fitness. Being a good generalist is of course fine and a...
What is Online Personal Training?
Just like every service industry, Personal training is now online and in a big way. Since 2015 the number of searches for online personal training has shot up by nearly 40%! So how does it work and what do we make of it? As is the case with personal training offline,...
The Lean Gains Game
Recently I had a break from training owing to a minor operation I needed on an old injury from my rugby days. With what has been a high workload with Storm I had been chained to my desk and I had more or less become the shape of it. The challenge I wanted to put on...
How Often Should You Perform Drop-Sets
You may well have had this conversation in the gym before, it goes a little something like this: You “excuse me, do you have many sets left on the bench?” Gym Member “just 4 sets, but I’m doing quadruple drop sets on incline press and dumbbell fly’s and I’ll need to...
How To Hack Your Hormones For Lean Muscle Gains
A lot of the women who train at Storm, after they have reached their body fat goals, want to increase their muscle mass and strength. You simply can’t separate strength training and the effects it has on our hormones. Here’s how to spot a session that will get your...
Supercharge Your Bench Press
For those of you who have lifted weights for a while, you’ll probably be familiar with the term ‘international bench press day’ aka…Mondays. And what a glorious day it is! You get under the bar and you’re fired up to shift some serious weight. But something is getting...
Eating Right For Muscle Growth
I would say most of the male clients that I meet will all mention wanting some muscle growth as a goal. It’s a great goal for anyone to have, even if your goal is fat loss, more muscle mass = more calories burned at rest. Unfortunately though building muscle can be a...
5 Tips From A Seminar With Christian Thibaudeau
5 awesome take away points from Christian Thibaudeau Last week myself (David) and Jack from #teamstorm had the pleasure of attending a 2 day seminar from Christian Thibaudeau hosted by Spartan Performance. Christian is a man who has trained a vast array of different...
Simplify Your Training Pt.1
The internet is like you local city library…except none of the books are in order, there is a group of know-it-alls shouting at the top of their voice and the librarian is a chimpanzee. There is a lot of information out there, which is in itself a wonderful thing....
The Great Muscle Mass Hoax
According to most health stores there are literally hundreds of products that will help you put on muscle mass. According to the scientific literature on the subject it’s a different matter I think there is definitely two and maybe four supplements that will help you...
The Great Muscle Gain Hoax-Part One
Part 1 Background- The problem with supplement testing . “What supplements can I take to put on muscle?” I often get asked this question and to be honest I place very little emphasis on supplements. In many ways this is due to the fact that often people can consider...
Healthy Muscle
If there’s one misconception that is commonly held by academics I meet It’s that muscle building is for the dumb, or that anyone who has developed lean muscle mass is in some way stupid or obsessive. Now I am not denying that there are some associated psychological...
What Matters Most?
What are the important factors to consider in order to get your training and nutrition absolutely on point? This is exactly what we wanted to know from the clients at Storm in this short video. In this one I get called a geek by a buddhist monk, I am beaten in a core...
5 Tips to a Bigger Deadlift (Updated)
#1 Perfect the start position This is essential to maximise power output and guard against injury, common mistakes here include; -Hips too high, this puts unnecessary pressure on the lower back and hamstrings, and the deadlift is then limited by the strength of these...
Teen Gainz
By Robbie Thompson Most teenage guys want to be bigger and have the massive arms, the chest your t’shirt hangs off and shoulders so wide you have to go through doors sideways! Well the good news is you’re primed to grow you just need to do it right. You grow by...
Gain Muscle & Lose Fat at the Same Time?
When it comes to getting in shape there are various tricks and tips you can use to change somebody's appearance. For example by changing the relative "stiffness" within a muscle or muscle group you can change somebody's posture. I bet if you were to talk to any PT or...
