Team Troponin (@teamtroponin)

The Devil's Lettuce and bodybuilding - do they mix? We've actually got access to some interesting data on body composition in users vs non-users. Surprisingly, the results of this study suggest that those who enjoy the green tend to have better body composition! For a little deeper dive into the…

If you’re training for hypertrophy, is the deadlift worth doing? We more often argue whether deadlifts are a “back exercise” or a “leg exercise,” but you might also want to consider whether the movement is worth performing at all. Of course, there’s the question of WHICH type of deadlift we’re…

As a strength athlete, can you progress barbell lifts without actually using a barbell? Absolutely! The barbell offers a lot of bang for your buck in terms of overall stimulus and absolute load. And it’s obviously a requirement for powerlifting and barbell-based strongman events. But year-round…

The biggest bodybuilders must be using some super-secret PED protocol, and with asinine doses, to boot - right? Nope. Not in most cases, at least. It’s not what people want to hear, but anyone who’s been involved in the sport at a high level knows there are really no secrets. PEDs are ubiquitous…

Changing loading schemes for multiple sets - an effective variation on the top set, backoff set scheme- Here’s a followup from a recent post on modifying machines’ strength curves, which featured the seated and step-back variations on a popular Hammer Strength row. We can accomplish a similar goal…

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast… We’re all tempted to pump the gas when coming back from an injury or small tweak. “I hit X weight for Y reps just 4 weeks ago - I can at least match that PR now that I’m feeling good!” Says the meathead who’s about to reinjure themselves. It’s easy to get caught up…

We have nothing to stress but stress itself… Quality bodybuilding information has never been more prevalent, and for the most part, that’s a great thing! We’re certainly carving out our own little niche in this community. Still, information overload is a problem, particularly when it comes to…

Can you change your rib cage structure after puberty? Probably not like Arnold said you could with pullovers…but in a sense, yes. As you add size, that new mass tends to pull on the structures to which it’s attached. That doesn’t mean bigger delts are going to literally widen your shoulder girdle…

Funny story time…bodybuilders don’t float. Everyone on this podcast found that snorkeling isn’t so fun when you’re heavy and (reasonably) lean, even with a life jacket. Apparently Justin was too prideful to turn back, but Dave and Dani didn’t care :) Noped right on out of that tour about 50 yards…

Do you measure your proteins raw or cooked? How about your carbs? Do you weigh in ounces or grams? …Does any of the above matter? For bodybuilding, what really matters is precision, not accuracy. And no, those terms don’t mean the same thing. Precision is consistency, essentially. If your scale is…

Your offseason is going great. Metabolism flying, PRs left and right, and you’re staying in decent condition months after your last show. A massive cheat meal can’t hurt, right? Maybe, maybe not. If you’re an open bodybuilder with a ton of mass, or even if you’re a smaller competitor with a…

Yes, insulin can make you leaner! Not by a tremendous margin, no, but even a slightly positive shift in body composition is a far cry from getting fatter. So many bodybuilders are convinced that insulin “made them fat,” but in all likelihood what made them fat was an ass-backwards approach to…

“Enhanced bodybuilding is all drugs and food! The training barely matters!” We’ve all heard this line countless times, and to be fair, if you compare top-level enhanced and drug-tested bodybuilders, you might come to the same conclusion. There’s a reason why most open pros are 250+ and shredded…

There's some great information available on social media, but the bigger you are or the harder you train, the less mass-produced media will probably apply to you. If you're looking for correctives or mobility work, it's incredibly important to make sure you're approaching it with intent. You…

There is NO way around it: If you’re not gaining weight, and you want to get bigger, you have to eat more. In all likelihood the skinny guy who “eats so much” is lucky to get 3,000 calories on a good day, but ultimately it’s a math equation. Even if 5,000 calories wasn’t doing the trick, 5,500…

In general, we want to perform movements with a narrow range of acceptable form. Dive-bombing a press or squat is just robbing the target muscles of meaningful stimulus, for example. But back training is a little unique because of the lats’ and traps’ extreme strength curve. Given the huge dropoff…

Especially when it comes to bigger guys with more mass, and subsequently, a more dramatic change in ribcage shape and function, upper body dynamics can play a notable role in driving patterns that contribute to lower body pain. While I often try to keep correctives focused on the primary area…

Is sleep as important for bodybuilding as recent trends would have you believe? Not quite…but you’re probably not getting away with poor sleep for long. Quality sleep DOES seem to correlate with better body composition and training performance - and vice-versa - but the reasons for those…

No secret, heavy pulls are both incredibly fun, and also can do a lot to add thickness to a back. We both come from powerlifting backgrounds, and learning to pull for bodybuilding versus efficiency has been a different type of skill acquisition. Pulling for maximum strength and efficiency is…

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Most of us have at least one, if not two or even three, lagging parts that need to be brought up for our stage presentation. As a physical therapist, Dani has a bit of a bias in seeing a relatioship between our lagging parts, our structure, and how to bring those parts up through our training…

Quads aren't growing? Does it feel like you're leaving everything on the gym floor on leg day, yet you're hardly seeing any growth? Before you tinker even more with your exercise selection, foot placement, rep ranges, and all the other typical variables...consider your breathing. Nasal breathing…

Why do some movements feel silky smooth, while others feel awkward and clunky? Assuming decent mechanics, one common reason is varying resistance profiles. Any free weight movement will feature even resistance from top to bottom. We're working against gravity, after all. But matters get more…

Need beefier triceps? Who doesn't? If close-grip bench and dips are getting stale, give this one a try - the machine JM press. If your gym is like most, there's probably a selectorized, upright bench press machine. You might not give it a second look for chest training, but it's one of the best…

Paused work- using training as rehab: Dani uses pauses a LOT in her process of making training the rehab itself for her clients- it isn’t fancy, but it’s very effective if the goal is to improve control, proprioception, and close the gap between tissue tolerance and training intensity. She uses…

Big, strong, and healthy: There’s often a perception that training needs to be one-sided, either training for strength, or for size. True: there are different training adaptations that occur as a result of the stimulus we give for strength expression (efficiency focused), or for hypertrophy…

Are you really as big or as lean as you think you are? Are you even close? Your first time achieving true contest shape will cut your ego down to size. You'll realize how NOT big you actually are and, by extension, how much more muscle the competitors in higher weight classes are carrying. You'll…

Why band your hack squat? Not reverse bands, but against bands. Both options modify the resistance profile in basically the same way (lighter at the bottom, heavier at the top), but there are a couple of advantages we get from hack squatting against band tension. First, the reinforcement of good…

Can you "fix" a meal mistake or a missed meal by changing macros the next meal? In the short term, sure...in the long run, though, it almost never pans out. We could talk all about the physiology of why this is the case and why the IIFYM "daily macros" concept doesn't tend to work for serious…

Having trouble feeling your lats? Try the bent-over low rope row, aka Dante Row, named after the DC Training creator who popularized the movement. @troponinnutrition credits the tremendous back progress he made in prep for the 2007 Jr. USAs to this movement, taking his lat spread from a weak…