Recommended Products And Readings

The first product that I am going to review is the foam roller.  I purchased my foam roller at sports authority, but you can receive it at a variety of sporting stores or online.  A suggestion I have for a place to purchase it online is from Sports Smith.  This is the same foam roller I currently have and you can get it for $19.95.  This is a must have for warming up and recovery.  This will allow you to get all of knots out of your body, which will allow you to have a great range of motion and it will make you feel 10x better.  This is a great foam roller.  It is very hard and dense, and it makes for a great self massage tool.  This foam roller is designed to get the knots out of places like your back, quads, calves, IT band, and inner thigh.  

The next product that I recommend to get is an addition to the foam roller.  As you know, the foam roller is quite large.  It is 36" by 6", so it can make it difficult to roll out certain areas like your glutes.  This is where a lacrosse ball comes in handy.  Although it may sound unconventional and unrelated to strength training, this is what a lot of fitness professionals use to get to those hard to reach spots on your body that the foam roller can't reach.  Others say that you can use a tennis ball, but I believe that the tennis ball isn't hard enough  and it won't be able to get the knots out.  The lacrosse ball I got is located at sports authority and I will provide a link right here.  This lacrosse ball is perfect for getting rid of the knots in hard to reach places because it is extremely hard and durable.

Next, I am going to provide you with an article that will show you how to use your newly purchased lacrosse ball and foam roller to get the most out of your workout.  This warm up is called the limber 11, and I use it every time before I deadlift and squat.  It warms me up a lot better than any other stretching program because it uses dynamic stretching and it incorporates the foam roller and lacrosse ball.  If I could make a recommendation of any pre-workout stretching routine to follow, this would be it.  The article can be found on bodybuilding.com.  The warmup itself takes about 15-20 minutes to complete, which is often times enough time to make people not want to do it.  But I can not stress enough how important it is to complete it.  Your body will move better during your workout and you will also be able to lift more weight because your muscles will be awake.  Another version of this article is also available on Youtube.  I recommend watching this Youtube video because it allows you to see what is actually going on, rather than looking at it in picture form.  The video is shot with Joe DeFranco, whom is the person that created the program.  This will warm you up perfectly before lifting heavy weights.

Now that I have given you every product you need to warm up, I will now get into the products needed for the actual lifting.  The first product I swear by is Eric Cressey's book, "Maximum Strength."  In my opinion, this is a must read for anyone interested in fitness.  I learned more from this book than I learned from any fitness article on the internet or any book from the library.  In this book you will learn how to warm up properly, you will learn a variety of exercises, how to perform the exercises correctly, and you will learn about intensity, rep ranges, volume, and program scheduling.  This book is broken up into 4 sections.  Each section takes place for 4 weeks, then the next phase is introduced.  This will last for another 4 weeks, and this will go on for 16 weeks.  This is to constantly keep your body guessing and to ensure that you are getting stronger and stronger each week.  This book also features a nutrition section at the end.  It teaches you all about supplementation, carbs, fats, protein, etc.

The next fitness product I am going to recommend are the Adidas Powerlift Trainer 2.0s.  I personally also have these, and I have found that they have greatly improved my squat.  They have a slight elevation in the heel which allows you to achieve greater depth in your squat.  Along with the greater depth you will receive, the squat shoes also have a solid foundation which makes you feel completely drilled into the ground.  The bottom surface is extremely hard and it will make you feel extremely sturdy while squatting.  Not only this, but the heel is low enough to be able to deadlift in them also.  You can also use them for other exercises like the bench press and overhead press, basically anything that you want a sturdy base in.  These shoes also look great.  I have bought powerlifting shoes in the past that are ugly and they don't perform as well as these ones.  You can buy these shoes for 79.99, which is a great investment if you were to ask me.  I think that these are a great shoe to start out in, and if you become very serious about powerlifting you can buy some of the more expensive ones that run around 200 dollars.  In my opinion though, I think that the Adidas Powerlift Trainers could be used for a long time.

The final product I am going to recommend is liquid grip.  This is also known as liquid chalk.  The purpose of liquid chalk is to give you a better grip while deadlifting or doing other exercises which involve your grip.  This product will give you a stronger grip and it will make it so that the bar never slips out of your hand.  I recommend this product because a lot of commercial gyms don't allow the use of regular chalk in the gym because it can become messy and chalk will end up everywhere.  With liquid chalk, all you have to do is squeeze a small pea size amount into your palms, and rub your hands together for 5 seconds.  I found that it can make deadlifting a lot more beneficial because your grip will no longer be in a position to hold you back.  Also, it only costs about $8.00 and it lasts for months.

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