How do you know if you’re making progress in the gym? For people new to weight lifting it’s pretty easy to see the results of all your hard work.  Adding more weight to the bar or performing more reps with the same weights is clear evidence of improvement when following a progressive overload resistance training program.  Add more weight, do more reps, rinse and repeat.​

Thanks everyone for reading all my articles!​ To show my appreciation I reduced the pricing on my lifting shirt.

Check out my awesome Barbell Zone T-Shirt.

Fad diets and restrictive meal plans are a thing of the past. All the cool kids are tracking macros and getting great results. Also know as flexible dieting or IIFYM, this may be the most effective nutrition plan ever.
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​But what the heck are macros and where do you get them? First, I'll explain the basics of macros and how to track them. Then, I'll give you the secret formula to setting your individual macro levels. Hint: it's way easier than you think.

A functional home gym is the best investment you can make to secure your fitness future. With just a few pieces of equipment, you can achieve amazing results right at home while saving money and time. Having a gym at home means less driving, less waiting, less distraction, and zero membership fees. Here are the five basic pieces of equipment I recommend to get your home gym started. 

If you're having trouble hitting your daily protein intake, I recommend supplementing with a high-quality protein powder. Whey protein isolate is the most bioavailable and digestible form of protein on the market. I don't even look at other forms of protein like blends or casein. It's the closest thing you can get to pure protein, and all whey isolates have little or no carbs and fat. Here's my top 5 list for 2016.

I love eating steak. All kinds of steak. For years I struggled with trying to get consistent results cooking steaks at home. Finally, I have a fool-proof method that achieves perfect medium rare every time. I also like shooting and editing videos, so I created the My Perfect Steak video to accompany this article.

Health professionals and fitness gurus seem to be stuck in an endless loop discussing why we have an out-of-control obesity epidemic. One side will demonize fat, while the other will say sugar is the problem. Low-carb diets trend for a while, then the wind shifts direction and the low-fat diets are en vogue again. They both work.

​Some go as far as to say calories don't matter if you eat the right foods. Well, there are no magic foods, and calories matter a lot. Most people have no clue how many calories they consume in a day. It's willful ignorance that is causing the obesity crisis. How did we get this way?

We all know somebody who is doing a juice cleanse right now. Celebrities sell them, new juice stores are opening every day, and we see people talking about cleanses all over Facebook. This trend has been around for a while now and just won't go away. I decided to dig into the nutrition facts for one of the most-popular cleanses available online. Check out what I found.

Making kefir at home is super simple and very cost effective. For just the cost of milk and about 5 minutes per day, I make my delicious kefir right in my kitchen. You can purchase commercially produced kefir at grocery stores for double the price of normal milk, but it's not the same as homemade. The commercially produced options are essentially a "kefir-like" manufactured product. The best, real kefir, is made at home. ​

In Part 1 of the My Bacteria series, I talked about my gut microbiome and the trillions of bacteria that live inside all of us. Your skin, the largest organ, is also home to a huge variety of living organisms. The skin is in constant contact with the world around us and for millions of years has evolved to live symbiotically with bacteria. These two environments, the skin, and the gut, host very different bacteria but the same basic concepts apply to maintaining a healthy relationship. Similar to my feed and seed concept for gut bacteria, your skin's bacteria require a protect and cultivate approach.

My most recent fascination with diet, health, and performance has been focused on the human microbiome. Our bodies are the host for trillions of bacteria. We have a positive symbiotic relationship with all these little germs, only a tiny percentage of them have the potential to be harmful.  The discovery of antibiotics made a tremendous impact on modern medicine and protecting our health, but the medical community has now recognized that over use of these compounds is having negative consequences. 

Here' an update on my previous article about my journey to a 500lbs deadlift. The night I hit my 500lbs deadlift my wife went into labor, and we now have a happy and healthy baby boy. Obviously, I took a break from lifting. Every new parent understands the sheer exhaustion associated with bringing home a newborn human baby.  I couldn't imagine sticking with a heavy lifting program and being a brand new parent at the same time. ​

July 5th, 2016 was my 1,234th day in a row logging everything I eat. I spent about 5 minutes that day using the Myfitnesspal app on my phone. That's it, about 5 minutes total time to log the whole day's food intake. When I first started using the app in February of 2013, it took a little more time per day to figure it all out, but the learning curve is very quick. After a couple of weeks, logging my food each day became as easy as browsing Facebook or Twitter.  ​

Programming and tracking my workouts along ​my journey to a 500lbs deadlift was essential. Jim Wendler's 531 program is one of the most popular in the fitness world and I know from experience that it works. It does require a lot of math and I didn't want to mess around with a calculator all the time. I tried the other spreadsheets available online and none offered the detail and analysis that I knew was possible. So I started my own and spent nearly 2 years developing and making improvements. Now I have the Best 531 Spreadsheet. 

​​I first learned about weightlifting my senior year in high school. It was offered as an elective taught by the football coach. On our first day, we met in the weight room, and with very minimal instruction about safety, we all choose a partner and were set free to use all of the equipment. Naturally, everyone wanted to bench press, which was mostly standing around talking about bench press. Some members of the football team were able to use the 45lb plates and bench 135lbs for reps. Impressive at the time, as I was very small and unable to do the same. I remember maxing out with a very slow 95lb bench press.
I was no good on the bench, but, surprisingly, I was excellent on the leg extension machine. I could lift the whole stack of weights many times. One day I did this a few times too many. Then I had to crawl up the steps leading from the weight room to the locker room. My breakfast earlier that morning was a can of Orange Crush. It came back up.