Tri-Ripped Promotional Articles

Sometimes, the best way to sell something is not to do any selling at all. Sending your prospects to high quality content is a proven way to make affiliate commissions without the high-pressure sales pitch. Below, you will find a 7-part article series that you can direct your readers to one at a time, or cherry-pick based on their interests. Each of these articles was designed to not only provide valuable information, but also lead directly into selling Tri-Ripped.

Here are the article titles in the 7-Part “Getting a Better Body” Series:

3 Easy Steps To Get Nice Shoulders (part 1)
4 Ways To A Better Butt (part 2)
How To Get A Flat Stomach (part 3)
How To Build Legs Like Lance Armstrong (part 4)
3 Moves To Get An Impressive Chest (part 5)
5 Steps To Look Good In A T-Shirt (part 6)
How To Swim, Bike & Run Fast, And Also Have An Amazing Body (part 7)

These quality, keyword-driven articles (personally written by Ben Greenfield) can be published in 7 parts, split into multiple parts for longer series, and be posted on your website, blog, forum, or in email newsletters and auto-responders.

It is highly recommended that every time you release any of these articles via e-mail, website or blog that you also send out a quick summary and link via Twitter and Facebook. This will significantly increase your sales, and only takes an extra minute when you publish each article.

If you have any questions about how to use these articles, want more videos or pictures to use, or need anything else to help you promote, simply e-mail [email protected]

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“3 Easy Steps To Get Nice Shoulders”

Compared to their running and cycling brethren, triathletes certainly tend to have slightly more muscular shoulders. But when you actually look at a triathlon junkie from the side view, you’ll see a rather unsightly phenomenon: a hunched back, slouched shoulders, and ugly curvature in the upper spine.

These slumping triathlon shoulders (which can turn into a permanent fixture on your body) come from a combination of spending long hours hunched over the saddle of a bike, working the internal shoulder rotators during swimming, while neglecting the external rotators in the weight room, and often a job spent sitting at a desk or computer.

So how can you get nice shoulders and still be fast at triathlon? Here’s what to do:

How To Get Nice Shoulders Step #1: Stretch your chest muscles.

Tight chest muscles can come from sitting a desk for several hours with your hands on a keyboard, from riding a bike in the aero position, and from swimming. Once tight, and especially in the presence of weak external rotators, these muscles pull your forward into a slouch.

To stretch tight chest muscles, try a doorframe stretch, in which you reach for the top of a door frame, place your hands on it and lean forward as far as you can. If you can’t reach the top of a door frame, just place one hand over the other hand, and lean into a wall.

How To Get Nice Shoulders Step #2: Strengthen your external rotators.

Although the most popular exercise for “strengthening” the external rotators is to grab an elastic band and do dozens of repetitions of rotation for the shoulders, most of us don’t have time to stand around doing that. Bigger, multi-joint exercises like pull-ups and rows work far better, and have the added advantage of burning more calories and working your arm muscles.

I’ve personally installed a pull-up bar in the door of my office (it cost me about $25), and I try to do at least 25 pull-ups each day (usually one set of 5 whenever I walk under the bar). You can also include regular or assisted pull-ups as a weekly part of your gym routine. Also include lat pull-downs, seated rows, cable rows, and single arm dumbbell rows – focusing on squeezing your shoulder blades back and maintaining a tall, proud posture as you do each exercise.

How To Get Nice Shoulders Step #3: Work the core.

Blah, blah, blah, work the core. Sure, you’ve heard this before. But think about it this way: when you’re riding a bike, swimming, or sitting at your desk, there is one thing that has to happen before you begin to slouch: your core has to get tired first.
But if your core is strong, it takes a massive load off your shoulders, and allows you to maintain much better posture. I personally recommend planks as the best way to strengthen your core and shoulders at the same time.

Try this: get into a front plank position, hold for 3 deep breaths, then switch to a side plank position left side, hold for 3 more breaths, then side plank right side for 3 breaths, and finish by holding a full push-up position for 3 breaths. Do that entire sequence without your knees touching the ground. See how many rounds you can do before you core collapses. If you can get to 10 round (about 7-9 minutes of planking), you’ve got a solid core. Otherwise, do this routine once or twice per week until you can get to 10 rounds.

Now that you’ve learned the 3 easy steps to get nice shoulders, you can be one of those triathletes who swims fast, but also cuts an impressive figure, and doesn’t have that notorious slouch, especially when people look at you from the side.

If you want to learn more about how to swim, bike and run lightning fast, but also have a nice body, (and get access to the other 6 articles in this series) then head over to INSERT YOUR AFFILIATE LINK HERE for a brand new approach to training for the ultimate triathlon body.

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“4 Ways To Get A Better Butt”

Maybe you have super skinny legs and don’t like your flat backside. Maybe you want your butt to look better in jeans or a swimsuit. Or perhaps you simply can’t seem to generate the muscular force you want while lifting weights, running or riding a bike.

Whether you’re pursuing performance or power, you’re about to learn how to get a better butt, what your butt muscles actually do, good butt muscle exercises, and a simple 4-step solution to get your glutes firing.

Why You Need A Better Butt

A common imbalance (even among athletes) is a weak butt. This is a result of a combination of a “sitting” profession that keeps the butt muscles turned off all day long, followed by hitting the gym, running, cycling or doing any other form of exercise with those inactivated butt muscles.

When this happens, it creates three problems: 1) you lose the aesthetic appeal of having nice glutes; 2) you get low back pain as your pelvic joint overcompensates for a weak butt and 3) you can’t generate as much power as you should be able to generate with your hips and legs.

What Are The Butt Muscles?

Your butt is comprised of several muscles. The first is your “gluteus maximus”, which is one of the largest and strongest muscles in your body – starting at your hip and ending on your upper leg bone. The gluteus maximus extends and externally rotates your leg, also extends your trunk, and is mostly responsible for the “round” look you can get in your butt when you do exercises that trigger these motions.

The other two smaller butt muscles are the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. These muscles, which can become just as notoriously weak as the gluteus maximus, primarily work when you’re supporting your body on one leg, as you might do when you’re walking, running, climbing stairs or changing directions.

What Are Good Butt Muscle Exercises?

If you’ve ever been out on a tough, hilly hike, you’ve realized from your sore butt the next day just how much you utilize your glutes when you step, climb and change direction. By simulating these type of hiking movements when you train your butt in the gym, you can significantly improve your leg power, and also get a better butt. Here are three good butt exercises to get those mountain-goat glutes:

1) Step-Ups. Choose a bench or platform that is preferably at knee height or above. Place on leg up on the elevated surface and step-up, driving your opposite to your chest as you step. For added difficulty, place a barbell on your back or clutch a dumbbell to your chest. Do 3-5 sets of 8-12 reps for each leg.

2) Stair-Climber Strides. Get on a stair climber at the gym and hold a dumbbell in each hand. Put the machine on a relatively slow climb rate and climb 2-3 stairs at a time, focusing on pushing through the entire stepping motion. Perform 3-5 sets of 2-4 minutes, and recover between reps by working a different non-leg exercise (such as core, arms, etc.).

3) Kick-outs. There are several variations of the kick-out motion, but each involves you bending at the waist and kicking out behind you, preferably with your heel going higher than your low back. You can get in a crawl position and kick-out (easy version), use a kick-out machine at the gym, or attach a cable or elastic band to your leg and kick-out. Perform 3-5 sets of 10-20 kick-outs per leg.

4 Steps To Getting A Better Butt

So today, I show you a 4 step process to getting a stronger butt in 8 weeks:

Step 1: 4 sets of 25 bridges (shown below) every 2 days for 2 weeks

Step 2: 4 sets of 25 ball bridges (shown below) every 2 days for 2 weeks

Step 3: 2 sets of 25 ball bridges and 2 sets of 25 single leg bridges (shown below) for 2 weeks

Step 4: 2 sets of 25 ball single leg bridges and 2 sets of 25 single leg ball bridges (shown below) for 2 weeks

Once you’ve finished, move into maintenance mode: 2x/week do 2 sets of 25 single leg bridges and 2 sets of 25 single leg ball bridges.

And that’s it.

This will take about 10-15 minutes of your time, two times a week. You will be able to literally watch your butt transform, and feel significantly greater stability when you’re standing on one leg, stepping, changing direction, jumping, running or bicycling.

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“How To Get A Flat Stomach”

Whether it’s a sign of health, beauty, virility, or movie star status, a flat stomach is something that many people all over the world crave. This is because a flat stomach is so hard to get, it can indicate full-body power or virility, and it is essential to powerful performance. In this article, you’ll learn how to get a flat stomach safely, effectively, and with zero liposuction involved.

How To Get A Flat Stomach

Despite what many folks appear to believe, six-pack abs are not six soda-can shaped muscles that sit under the skin of your stomach, somehow magically filling and emptying as you become more or less fit.

Instead, your stomach muscles are made up of four basic groups that, like most muscles, appear to be named by ancient Latin monks:

1) The rectus abdominis: The rectus abdominis is one big sheet of muscle tissue that runs from your breastbone down to your pelvis.

2) The external obliques: The external obliques run from your ribs to your hips in a forward direction.

3) The internal obliques: Theinternal obliques run from your ribs to your hips in a backwards direction

4) The transverses abdominis: The transverses abdominis is located deep in your abs, underneath the obliques.

The key to better abs, which most people neglect when trying to get a flat stomach, is a training program that targets each of these muscles, and not just one of them. You simply can’t train just one single muscle group of the stomach in isolation and expect for your abs to look fit, trim, toned, ripped or flat. Instead, you need to train all the stomach muscles in a functional, multi-muscle manner.

This is same reason why people who want nice arms can’t just do bicep curls, but also need to do pull-ups and deadlifts, and why people who want a better butt can’t just do lying hamstring curls, but also need to exercises do squats and lunges. The body responds best when we train entire muscle groups that surround our “trouble spot,” and not just the isolated trouble spot. So people who want a flat stomach can’t only do crunches.

So if this type of multi-muscle training is a goal, what would a flat stomach workout look like?

Flat Stomach Exercises

You should work your stomach muscles every 2-3 days, including abdominal exercise as part of a scheduled cardio workout or weight training workout. For your flat stomach training, you should include one exercise for each of the abdominal muscle groups, and also one exercise for your lower back. Here is a guide to choosing the proper exercises:

-Rectus abdominis: For your rectus abdominis, exercise choices include flexing motions of the spine, such as crunches and crunch variations, V-ups, sit-ups and sit-up variations, hanging leg raises, or knee-ups. Front planks are also quite good for this muscle group.

-External and internal obliques: Twisting and rotating motions are good exercises because they work both the external and internal oblique muscles. That is because if you rotate to your left, your left external oblique and your right internal oblique are doing the work, and vice versa. Twisting motions include Russian Twists, Cable Torso Twists, and the WoodChopper.

-Transverses abdominis: The transverses abdominis is an interesting muscle group, because it doesn’t really move you through a range of motion as much as support the stomach and the gut. So when you suck in your stomach, that’s the transverses abdominis muscles working. Although you can work this muscle group anywhere, such as sucking in your stomach while you’re driving in your car, sitting on an airplane, or standing in line at the grocery store, you can also make it work pretty hard with an exercise like front planks.

-Low back muscles: Finally, the low back muscles can be worked with a simple contraption at the gym that allows you to do low back extensions or, if you’re not at a gym, you can do back extensions on a stability ball, or from the floor by lying on your stomach and lifting all four limbs off the ground.

So during a typical flat stomach workout, you would include several sets of a flexing exercise, a twisting exercise, a planking exercise and an extending exercise.

Get Rid of Stomach Fat

No matter how well you’ve developed your stomach muscles, you need to get rid of layers of stomach fat that can cover up your abs. Here are three tips to get rid of that last little bit of flab around your waistline:

1) Be sure you’re using a well-rounded workout routine, which includes what I call the “3 Pillars of Exercise”:

Pillar 1: Weight Training

Pillar 2: High-Intensity Cardio Intervals

Pillar 3: Aerobic Fat-Burning Sessions

Weight training alone or cardio alone is often not enough to erase that last bit of storage fat, so use of the modes above in your training routine.

2) Control stress and get adequate sleep. Often, bloating and inflammation are a primary cause of a puffy stomach, or a little extra padding on the waistline. Use stress-reduction techniques, and try to sleep 7 to 8 hours each night whenever possible.

3) Eliminate or significantly moderate the big three belly fat triggers: high-sugar, starchy foods (yes, that includes wheat); processed, packaged foods; and alcohol. I’ve witnessed these simple changes produce visible stomach fat reduction in just 2 to 4 weeks.

Using the tips in this article, you can get the perfect musculature for a flat stomach, develop a functional core that gives you powerful physical performance, and lose belly fat.

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“How To Build Legs Like Lance Armstrong”

Of all the sports on the face of the planet, professional cycling produces some of the most impressive legs. But you don’t have to ride a bike for 4-6 hours a day to get those same rock-hard quads, rippling thighs, and powerful, muscular calves. Instead, in this article, you’ll learn how to use a highly effective series of strength and toning moves to get legs like Lance Armstrong.

By splitting the legs into three basic muscle groups, the quadriceps, the hamstrings and the calves, you can create a strategy for targeting each section. Here is how:

1) Quadriceps

There are two reasons that the legs of a marathoner look skinny or stringy compared to a cyclist: 1) the leg muscles must contract with a greater amount of force to pedal a bicycle compared to taking a step while running; 2) jarring, impact-based running is far more catabolic and able to significantly tear down muscle fibers compared to cycling.

Based on these two reasons, a strategy for building impressive quads should involve choosing activities that 1) require high force production, such as lifting weights or uphill bike riding, and 2) avoid excessive catabolic activities like running or long easy cardio sessions.

Since the quadriceps (which run along the front of the thigh) are primarily responsible for extending the lower leg at the knee joint and flexing the upper leg at the hip joint, any program designed to build the quads should focus on these motions.

A perfect exercise for combining both these movements is the “kick-forward”. For this exercise, simply attach a cable or elastic band to the ankle or lower leg, stand on the opposite leg, and kick forward while keeping the leg relatively straight and the quad muscles contracted. Move in a slow, controlled fashion for this exercise.

2) Hamstrings

In many exercise books or magazines, you may have read about a bad quad:hamstring ratio, which basically means that the hamstrings (which run along the back of the leg from the hips to the upper calves) are dis-proportionally stronger than the quads. While this can sometimes be the case in elite athletes, in the average individual the problem is not that the hamstrings are too strong, but rather that they are too tight. In either case, the result is poor performance and low back pain, as well as an inability to properly develop the muscles in the hamstrings.

For this reason, it is important to choose hamstrings exercises that focus on both mobility and range-of-motion in the hamstrings as well as strength in the hamstrings. Since the hamstrings are responsible for extending the leg at the hip joint and flexing the leg the knee joint, a perfect exercise for this objective is the “Romanian deadlift”.
For this movement, which can be done standing on one leg or two, you simply hold a weight and hinge forward at the waist while sticking your butt out behind you. If you keep your back straight and look forward, you’ll reach a point where the hamstrings feel very tight and you simply can’t go any further without bending your back. At that point, simply stand back up to the starting position. During the entire Romanian deadlift, keep your knees just slightly bent.

This exercise will address both tight and weak hamstrings, and allow you develop the backs of your legs without having to worry about a strength imbalance between your quads and hamstrings. Once the hamstrings and back of your legs are strong, you’ll have impressive muscle development from the upper calves all the way up to the butt.

3) Calves

It may seem intuitive that to get nice calf muscles (which run along the back of your lower leg) you should do lots of toe raises, since the calf muscles are responsible for extending the toes. While this can certainly help, it is a very slow and inefficient way to get strong, powerful and toned calves, and doesn’t take advantage of the fact that the calf muscles are also partially responsible for flexing the leg at the knee joint.

Instead, a good calf program should focus on movements that require flexing the knee and high amounts of strength and power, while shifting some of the weight onto the mid or front of the foot so that the calf muscles are forced to contract.

Two such movements are squat jumps and incline sprinting. For squat jumps, simple get down into a squat position, swing your arms and jump as high as possible, then land in a controlled fashion with the knees slightly bent. Once you’re good at these type of body weight squat jumps, you can progress to doing squat jumps with a barbell on your back, or holding a medicine ball to your chest.

For incline sprinting, I recommend using a treadmill. My favorite incline sprinting workout on the treadmill is a 10×30. To do this, just put the treadmill at as high an incline as possible, then set it at what would be considered a fast running speed for you even if the treadmill were not on an incline. Get on, run for 30 seconds, then, while the treadmill belt is still moving, hop off and recover for 30-60 seconds (if you want, you can do crunches or push-ups while you recover). Once you’re rested, hop back on for another 30 second bout, for a total of 10 rounds.

By combing the quadriceps, hamstrings and calves exercises above with a few cycling workouts a week, you can easily develop legs like Lance without having to ride a bicycle as much as him!

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“Three Moves To Get A Better Chest”

Whether you’re a guy or a girl, a better chest is something that can help you look better in a swimsuit or business suit. But getting a better chest goes far beyond simply looking good or having nice pecs.

This is because the chest muscles are responsible for flexing your upper arm bone (as you’d do when swimming), moving the arm inwards (as you’d do when holding bike handlebars) rotating the arm bone towards the body (as you’d do when running), and breathing deeply (as you’d do during intense exertion).

Because of those actions, getting a better chest is crucial to both aesthetics and performance – whether you’re a power lifter or an endurance athlete.

So here are three ways to take your pecs to the next level and get a better chest:

1) Press From All Angles.

Don’t just bench-press or do push-ups. Instead, include exercises on a decline or incline bench, or with your feet or hands elevated to work all angles of your chest. On a weekly basis, you should include incline, decline, and flat chest pressing or push-ups so that you attack your chest muscles from all angles. For variety, do exercises like decline pushups, incline bench press, and dumbbell chest press.

2) Fly.

Flies help develop the inner pec muscles that presses have a hard time targeting, and there are many variations of the fly that you can use, including machine chest flies, decline dumbbell flies, flat dumbbell flies, seated cable flies, and standing cable flies. When you do flies, don’t go outside your comfortable range of motion, as it can be easy to hurt your shoulders if you don’t do flies properly.

3) Work Your Postural Muscles.

Slouched shoulders can make your chest look droopy, so when you’re working your chest, you also need to include shoulder posture exercises like seated rows, single arm cable or dumbbell rows, pull-downs and pull-ups. When you’re at your computer, reading a book, or sitting in a car, bus or airplane, always make sure you’re not letting your neck or shoulders roll forward, as this can lead to a sagging chest.

No discussion of how to get a better chest would be complete without addressing “man boobs”, which are medically referred to as gynecomastia – or abnormally large mammary glands. This condition is not physically harmful, but can be embarrassing and an indicator of more serious underlying hormonal conditions. If you’re a guy, and you find that no matter how much you work your chest, you can’t get rid of the extra tissue, you should:

1) See an endocrinologist or a naturopathic physician. Sex hormone imbalances and a reaction to pharmaceutical drugs are commons causes of man boobs.

2) Wear compression garments. Compression sports-wear, such as supportive t-shirts, can help with both appearance and comfort as you work on getting rid of man boobs.

3) Watch your diet. Some folks simply store more fat in certain areas – and any caloric excess is going to go straight to your trouble spot, especially if that’s mammary tissue! For getting rid of man boobs, pay special attention to limiting alcohol, sugars, and processed fats such as baked goods and vegetable oils.

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“5 Steps To Look Good In A T-Shirt”

The t-shirt became popularized by sailors and Marines, and eventually found it’s way into pop culture during the 1950’s.

But it originally evolved from 19th century underwear.

So if you’re going to be walking around wearing your underwear, then you’d better know how to look good in a t-shirt. Using the five steps in this article, you’re guaranteed to look good in a t-shirt, cut an impressive figure and wear your wardrobe with confidence.

Step 1: Remember Your Back

Back when I was a bodybuilder, it was tempting to simply pay attention the front of the body: the shoulders, the chest, the abs, and the front of the arms. But I quickly learned that to look good, you also need to pay attention to your backside.

When you’re wearing a t-shirt, the most important part of your back to target is the part that makes those sleeves look good: the back of your arms (your triceps). Three of my favorite exercises for the back of your arms, which you can include each week, are:

1) Narrow Grip Pushups: Do a pushup in the regular or knee push-up position, but keep your hands closer together and make sure your elbows brush your ribcage as you lower yourself down and push yourself back up.

2) Tricep Pushdowns: At most gyms, you’ll find a cable apparatus with a rope or bar attached to it. This is perfect for triceps pushdowns, in which you start with your arms bent at 90 degrees and then extend them until they’re completely straight.

3) Dips: Begin by holding onto two bars and suspending your body in the air. You then lower yourself as far as you can–or until your elbows are at about 90 degrees–then push yourself back up.

Step 2: Work On Your “V”

Even if your chest, shoulders and arms are t-shirt ready, you simply won’t look good in a t-shirt if you are sporting muffin tops or a beer belly, or aren’t working your full spectrum of stomach muscles.

If you really want a tighter tummy, you need to incorporate exercises that create a belt of muscle around your entire mid-section. This belt serves to draw in the waist, keep the stomach flat, and keep your abs looking good in a t-shirt.

To work on all the stomach muscles, you need to include the following four movements:

1) Abdominal flexion, which will tighten the “rectus abdomonis”, or sheet of muscle tissue that is directly on the front of your stomach.

2) Rotation, which will work the internal and external oblique muscles that are on the sides of your stomach

3) Waist extension, which will incorporate the low back muscles to improve posture and allow you to keep your stomach sucked in

4) A planking exercise, which will allow you to tone each of the muscles listed above in one all-encompassing exercise.

Try to put together exercises from each category as a circuit, which you repeat 3-4x through with minimal rest.

Step 3: Target Your Traps

It can be unflattering if you have a skinny neck that sticks up out of your t-shirt, even if the rest of your body looks good. If you have a skinny neck, the trick is not to work the neck muscles, but rather to target your trapezius, or “traps” – since working these muscles will naturally give you a more muscular and defined neck.

The traps are primarily responsible for “shrugging the shoulders”, so you’ll want to include exercises such as dumbbell shoulder shrugs, dumbbell or barbell deadlifts, farmer’s walks, or walking lunges.

When you perform these exercises, make sure that you are allowing your shoulders to drop, but instead imagine the tops of your shoulders touching the bottom of your ear lobes, which will help you to keep your traps contracted.

Step 4: Squeeze Your Shoulders

If your shoulders are slouched or slumped forward, you might look just fine from the front, but a side shot of you in your t-shirt may look more like a hunchback. If you sit at your computer for long periods of time, ride a bicycle in a hunched over position, swim frequently, or have a combination of tight chest muscles and weak shoulder muscles, then you probably do have at least a slight upper back hump.

To address this issue, you need to include exercises that make you squeeze your shoulders back, such as seated rows, standing rows, pull-ups, pull-downs, and super-slow pushups (drop down for a 1-2-3 count, then push-up for a 1-2-3 count).

When you perform these exercises focus on keeping the shoulder blades aligned and the shoulder blade muscles contracted, the abs tight and “sucked in”, and the back straight. You can also improve posture by breathing in as you do the weight lifting portion of the exercise and then breathing out as you return the weight to the starting position.

Step 5: Get The Right T-Shirt

The final key to looking good in a t-shirt is to choose a style of shirt that actually looks good on you. Most people wear t-shirts that are either too large, or made of material such as polyester, a cotton/polyester blend, or synthetic nylon, which usually doesn’t hug the body in a way that brings out the figure you’re working so hard to develop.

First, you need to look for the word “fitted” or “muscle-fit” when you get your t-shirt. This is the best indication that it will form-fit your body in a way that flatters you. Even if the shirt is made of a cotton-polyester blend, this will still ensure that it fits you well.

If you can’t find a fit like that, at least try to choose a shirt that is a high quality cotton, such as 100% combed ringspun cotton or knitted fine cotton. This type of material is less likely to have a “pleated” appearance and more likely to form-fit your body.

That’s it!

Remember your back, work on your V, target your traps, squeeze your shoulders and choose the right shirt, and you’re guaranteed to look good in a t-shirt!

If you want to learn more about how to swim, bike and run lightning fast, but also have a nice body that looks good, (and get access to the other 6 articles in this series) then head over to INSERT YOUR AFFILIATE LINK HERE for a brand new approach to training for the ultimate triathlon body.

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“Five Ways To Swim, Bike & Run Fast, And Also Have An Amazing Body.”

So if you read the first six articles in this series, then you’ve learned so far how to get nice shoulders, a better butt, a flat stomach and an impressive chest. You’ve learned how to sculpt legs like Lance Armstrong and how to look very, very good in a t-shirt.

But can you keep that amazing body and still do endurance sports…like triathlon? After all, it’s pretty typical among the triathlon crowd to have tiny arms, a thin neck, a stick-like midsection, a weak body frame and even a “skinny-fat” look, with a little bit of weight in the belly and waist.

Let’s face it, folks – that ain’t sexy. Even though triathlon is the fastest growing sport on the planet, and races sell out thousands of slots in just a few minutes, it can still be a bit depressing when you realize that traditional triathlon training doesn’t really give you a nice body – and just makes you either really skinny or skinny-fat.

And the fear of having that emaciated, marathoner-like appearance is a legitimate concern if having a nice body is important to you. I know that it was a big concern for me when I got into the sport of triathlon – I didn’t want to watch in the mirror as my lean, hard muscle wasted away and I ended up looking like a skinny weakling.

But the truth is, when you train for triathlon, you don’t have to lose precious muscle, get extremely skinny, or become a scrawny endurance athlete. You can actually train for triathlon while still adding incredibly functional muscle and athleticism. You can swim, bike and run fast – and still have an amazing body.

Here’s how, in five easy steps:

1. Lift Right

There are two styles of weight lifting that most triathletes do: 1) high-repetition, low-resistance endurance style lifting, such as a circuit of 20 reps of several different exercises; 2) heavy, slow, football-style lifting, like deadlifts, squats or benchpress. In reality, there is a third style of lifting that is neglected among endurance athletes, but a long-kept tradition of the bodybuilding industry: “hypertrophy” style training: multiple sets of 8-12 repetitions.

With hypertrophy training, you can add and define lean muscle very quickly. But the problem is that it is very easy with this bodybuilder-style training to build non-functional muscle that actually slows you down when you’re competing in a sport such as triathlon.

The solution to this issue is to still do the hypertrophy-style training, but to avoid single-joint exercises like biceps curls, and instead to choose full body, functional exercises while scattering in just enough explosive and heavy weightlifting to keep your muscles extremely functional and fast.

2. Eat right

This may be a bit of a news flash for you, but fat doesn’t make you fat. Instead, fat – the healthy variety, like olives, almonds, walnuts, fish and avocadoes – is a hormonal precursor and gives your body the building blocks it needs to develop lean, hard muscle, as well as competitive drive, mental energy, libido, and every other advantage that comes from adequate hormones.

On the flipside, carbohydrates, especially the type that are really favored by endurance athletes, like bagels, sports drinks, and cereal, give you that soft, pudgy look in the mid-section, accompanied by a complete inability to build impressive, defined arms and legs.

So here’s what to do about this: if you’re trying to be fast at triathlon and also have an amazing body, you should eat a diet comprised of a high amount of healthy fats (40-50% fat), add in moderate helpings of natural protein to keep amino acids elevated for your muscles and brain, and top it off with strategically timed carbohydrate doses when they really matter, such as before or after your exercise sessions.

3. Train right

For years, sports scientists have know that short, hard and intense intervals give you just as much fitness and performance benefit as long, slow, aerobic exercise. But like a mouse on a wheel, it is tempting and even addictive for an endurance athlete to continue plugging away hours pounding the pavement, turning the pedals, or swimming back and forth.

Not only does this long, slow aerobic training completely nullify any attempts to add lean muscle or get a nice, defined body, but it also depletes hormones, causes overtraining syndrome, and takes away precious time from family, career and other hobbies.

Instead, for the triathlete who wants to avoid the skinny-fat look and get an amazing, muscular body, the training plan should incorporate strategically targeted high-intensity bursts of energy, a moderate amount of slightly longer “tempo” work, and finally, a low amount of long aerobic training – saving long rides, runs or swims for times when they are completely necessary and crucial to the program.

4. Supplement right

Inadequate hormones are a big issue for both men and women, and especially physically active men and women. “Andropause”, the decline or imbalance in male hormones and “Menopause”, the decline or imbalance in female hormones can begin to occur when you’re as young as 27 years old – and only gets worse as you age. Although hormonal deficits are the biggest problem among endurance athletes, there is also a prevalence of nutrition deficiencies, mineral loss, and very low fatty acid and amino acid levels – all of which keep you from both getting fast and having an amazing body.

These deficits and imbalances can occur because the body simply needs extra help if you’re lifting, swimming, cycling, running and cross-training on a regular basis. This level of activity is just more than the human body can naturally handle! The extra help comes in the form of completely legal sports nutrition supplementation like digestive enzymes, fish oil, vitamin D, greens supplements, magnesium and Chinese adaptogenic herbs. While there are countless supplement ads in magazines and on websites, you really only need a few of these key supplements to have your body ready to both go fast and maintain muscle.

And yes, if you are pushing your body beyond it’s natural tendencies, then even in a situation where your diet is perfect, supplementation is a must if you want to be fast and also have an amazing body.

5. Live right

There are little hacks or tweaks you can make to your lifestyle to simplify this whole process of performing fantastic and looking good.

For example, you can sleep more deeply by using magnesium, melatonin and keeping your bedroom completely dark. You can de-stress at the beginning of the day with a very simple 5-10 minute yoga routine. You can keep bouncing back from your workouts day-after-day by using a ice, compression and foam roller. You can detoxify your body by making sure you aren’t using body-damaging chemicals to clean your house or cook your food.

These are just a few of the little lifestyle tweaks that you can make, but they’re incredibly important if you want to add muscle and athleticism while getting the body of your dreams and still being fast for triathlon.

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