The Protein Corner

The best glute workouts follow a few principles:  They include exercises that effectively target the glutes (many don’t).  They involve taking each set relatively close to failure (the point you can’t move the weight despite giving your best effort). They involve gradually increasing the weight over time.  Looks simple, but this is totally different from how many women think they should be training to build their butt. For example, you may have heard that the best way to grow your glutes are exercises like the Stairmaster, Pilates, yoga, or even walking.  Nothing wrong with these things, but they’re going to do almost nothing for your butt.  Thirty minutes of proper strength training per week beats 10 hours of Stairmaster or Pilates.  And specifically, you want to be primarily doing barbell and machine exercises to grow your butt.  Bodyweight exercises like bodyweight bridges and squats are better than nothing, but they simply aren’t as effective for building your glutes as e...

Lower ab training requires two things: Doing the right exercises. Using the right technique. Research shows that ab exercises that involve lifting your legs toward your chest (rather than pulling your chest toward your waist) emphasize the lower portion of your abs more than the upper. The reason for this is basically what you’d expect: the part of your abs closest to whatever you’re lifting has to work the hardest. That means exercises like captain’s chair leg raises, reverse crunches, and scissor kicks emphasize the lower abdominal muscles a bit more than other ab exercises. That said, the problem with most of these exercises is that they’re body weight exercises that make it difficult to add weight to over time. Other exercises that are easier to load, like the weighted sit up and cable crunch, still train the lower abs. And because these allow you to train with heavier loads, they’re arguably better all-around exercises for building a six-pack. T...

For years, magnesium citrate has been the standard form used in most magnesium supplements. It’s cheap to produce, absorbed relatively well, and most consumers aren’t even aware there are other options, so most supplement brands don’t bother using anything else.  And for the most part, this is logical—most kinds of magnesium like magnesium oxide, magnesium chloride, and magnesium malate haven’t consistently proven to be any better than plain ol’ magnesium citrate.  That said, one challenger has emerged that’s arguably superior: magnesium glycinate .  If you want the long-story short: magnesium glycinate is generally better absorbed and easier on the gut than magnesium citrate, which makes it a better choice for most people.  Magnesium citrate isn’t “bad,” and many people can take it without issue, but many also find that it causes gastrointestinal upset. And if that’s you, glycinate is a better choice.  Key Takeaways Magnesium glycinate generally causes fewer gastrointestinal pr...