Your body is a machine that constantly reinvents itself. Every minute of every day, it breaks down its own tissues and replaces them with new stuff it makes from a combination of the food you eat and recycled material it scavenges from other tissues.

No matter how old your Facebook profile says you are, your component parts are considerably younger. Even your bones replace themselves every 10 years. By that standard, your muscle cells, with an average age of 15 years old, are the adults at the party. 

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Your workouts will cause the protein in your muscles to break down and build up much faster than it does in ordinary circumstances. In fact, when you work out with the goal of becoming more awesome than you are now, the entire point is to get that protein to turn over. But it only helps if you end up with more than you had when you started.

There are two ways to do that. The first, and by far the easiest, is to eat more protein than you currently do. Protein, all by itself, is anabolic. It wants to be stored in your muscles. The second is to work out in a way that disrupts your muscles and forces them to respond by getting bigger and stronger.

The combination of a diet rich in high-quality protein (like this whey protein powder from the Men’s Health store) and a great strength-training program is the oldest, best, and only non-pharmaceutical way to reach that goal. This article will show you how much protein you need to eat, and when.

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There is no man that will say he enjoys the bottom of a barbell squat.

It’s the portion of the exercise where you probably feel the most uncomfortable. And if you fail or dump the weight, it usually happens when you’re in the hole.

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That’s why I want you to hang out in the bottom of the squat longer.

Related: THE 21-DAY METASHRED—an At-Home Body-Shredding Program That Strips Away Fat and Reveals Lean, Hard Muscle

A pause squat requires you to come to a full, extended stop at the lowest part of the rep. Now, this is by no means an Earth-shattering idea. However, it’s something I find many guys (coaches and trainers included) don’t do often enough.

Here are the main benefits of pause squats:

1. You  strengthen the weakest portion of your squat.

2. You gain more confidence and learn to become more comfortable “in the hole.”
3. You increase your muscles’  Time Under Tension (TUT), which plays a major role with increased mass. In short: more TUT = bigger muscles.

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.