Just because it’s chest day doesn’t mean you're relegated to park your backside on a bench for your session. While the bench is a valuable tool for overall chest strength, it can place excess stress on the delts, which can be tough for those with injured shoulders. For pure pec muscle growth, there are several exercises that will get you off the bench and on your way to chest growth in PECtacular fashion.

The plank strengthens the dozens of muscles between your shoulders and hips.

But if you jack your feet in and out as you do it, the plank suddenly becomes so much more than just a core builder.

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The quick movement of your feet provides a great dynamic stability challenge that makes your abs scream, and ramps up your heart and metabolic rate.

And you can make it even more difficult by changing up your arm positioning. This creates an unbalanced foundation, so you have to work harder to perform the same exercise.

Put it all together using the plank jack complex below. Do each of the following four plank variations for 15 seconds each without resting. Once you’ve completed the fourth exercise, rest one minute. That’s one round. Perform up to five total rounds.

Doing 100 reps of any exercise isn’t easy.

Doing 100 reps of burpee-pullups as fast as possible may be one of the hardest challenges you’ll ever perform at the gym. It works every muscle in your body and leaves you feeling like your heart and lungs are going to explode.

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Related: THE 21-DAY METASHRED—30-Minute Cutting-Edge Workouts That Torch Fat Fast. One Guy Lost 25 Pounds in Just 6 Weeks!

Here’s how to do it: Stand in front of a pullup bar. Do a burpee, and then immediately jump up into a pullup. When your feet hit the floor, drop into a burpee again.

Currently, in the United States, improving physical fitness and overall levels of health is largely regulated to two different elements; that of exercise and diet. Yet, to simply focus only on these two elements of physical well being is to do a disservice to what is required to live a healthy, fulfilled life.

This section of our website is intended to shed light on a part of fitness that is often overlooked: that of mental health, stability, and wellness. The mental stability and well being of an individual is subject to disease and entropy just as the body is. This being said, when compared to physical and nutritional health, mental health and wellness is equally important. Hence, to truly live a lifestyle that is filled with good health and fitness, individuals must include achieving mental wellness as well.

One approach to ensuring mental balance and wellness that can be utilized, and has been for thousands of years, is the practice of meditation. While meditation can be, and often is, practiced independently, it can be paired with several other exercise types including Yoga and Pilates.

Origin of Meditation

The earliest records of meditation date back to 50,000 years ago. The practice originally developed as a ritual involved in a number of different religions. In fact, almost every major religion utilizes meditation in one form or another, from Hinduism to Christianity. Throughout time, however, the practice has found a place outside of the realm of religion. This is most likely because people became aware of the vast array of benefits that meditation can provide a person even when it is void of any religious implications.

Although Meditation and Yoga are very closely related, Meditation as a formal and separate practice did not arise until much later, a little more than 5,000 years ago (actual recorded writings about Meditation). Granted, people have likely been practicing some form of meditation since the beginning of their existence. Any time that you take some time out to gather your thought or get some fresh air to clear your mind, you are technically using meditation to relax and focus your mind.