Exercise You've Never Tried, Volume 4 by Chris Shugart and TC If you've read the first three installments in this series and you've been trying out these untraditional exercises, then the other people in your gym probably think you're a nutcase by now. Of course, all these cool variations and new exercises will inevitably lead to new muscle growth, so at least they'll think you're a buff nutcase. In volume four, we keep the nuttiness rolling with several fresh...

Guest Atomic Dog Hall Monitors of Morality by Chris Shugart The Atomic Dog is a weekly feature that isn't necessarily about weight training or bodybuilding. Sometimes it's about sports in general, sex, women, or male issues of some kind. At times it's inspirational, but it can also be informative, funny, and even a little weird, but hopefully, always interesting and a little controversial. We hope it reflects the nature of Te...

Dr. Health Nut An Interview with Dr. Joseph Mercola by Chris Shugart Log on to the Testosterone Forum and start reading all the threads about health. What you'll find is that one name keeps popping up in the conversations, and the very mention of that name is sure to cause a heated debate. The name? Dr. Mercola. But who is this guy and what can we learn from him? We headed to his website (one of the most popular health sites on the net wi...

Short Topic #1: 3-2-1 Shoulders by Chris Shugart When it comes to weight training, the deltoids are unique. On the one hand, they're probably overtrained. That's because the delts play a role in just about every compound exercise. Some estimate the front or anterior delts of a bodybuilder are five times larger then a non-weight trainer. Not only do most bodybuilders train the front delts directly, they also do things like inclines bench...

The Microcurrent Revolution Another piece of the bodybuilding puzzle? by Chris Shugart Three people approached the stage, each with his or her own brand of pain. The first was an athlete with plantar fasciitis. The soft-spoken bearded fellow on stage pulled out a device that looked like a Walkman with two little wands attached. He touched the wands, or probes, to the athlete's leg and foot at a variety of angles. In about five minutes, the ath...

Exercises You've Never Tried, Volume 3 by Chris Shugart and TC Gym Rule #45 for T-men: If you train like everyone else in the gym, then you’re probably not training very well. Why? Because the average meathead uses poor form, only trains his chest and biceps, and only knows about six total exercises, most of which he accidentally learned by flipping through a 1987 issue of Muscle & Fiction while looking for bikini pictures. That’s too ...

Refresher Course Five Ways to Get Unstuck and Turn Back on the Gains! by Chris Shugart Why Can't Johnny Grow? Things started out great for Johnny. After just a few weeks of training in his garage with an old set of cement-filled weights, he noticed changes in his body. His arms got bigger, his pecs popped out, and his legs started to look like something other than the bottom half of an anorexic chicken. This was going to be a snap, Jo...

Guest Atomic Dog The Moral of the Story by Chris Shugart The Atomic Dog is a weekly feature that isn't necessarily about weight training or bodybuilding. Sometimes it's about sports in general, sex, women, or male issues of some kind. At times it's inspirational, but it can also be informative, funny, and even a little weird, but hopefully, always interesting and a little controversial. We hope it reflects the nature of Testosterone magazine...

Guest Atomic Dog Surfing the Edge by Chris Shugart The Atomic Dog is a weekly feature that isn't necessarily about weight training or bodybuilding. Sometimes it's about sports in general, sex, women, or male issues of some kind. At times it's inspirational, but it can also be informative, funny, and even a little weird, but hopefully, always interesting and a little controversial. We hope it reflects the nature of Testosterone magazine i...

Stuff We Like Consumer Reports for Bodybuilders by John Koenig and Chris Shugart There are literally thousands of bodybuilding tools on the market today. These include exercise gadgets, athletic training devices, books, videos, and supplements. They runthe gamut from complete garbage to products you shouldn't live without. It's probably no surprise to you that most of these toys and tools fall into the recycle bin ca...

Exercises You've Never Tried, Volume 2 by Chris Shugart and TC After we posted Volume 1 of this series of articles just a couple of weeks ago, we got a significant number of e-mails from grateful trainees. It seems that a lot of you out there were a little bored with the exercises you've been doing. Some of the excitement had gone out of your workouts and you were even considering asking your workout partner to pu...

The Symposium of a Lifetime An Interview with Dr. Ken Kinakin by Chris Shugart Back in 1999 a Canadian chiropractor was giving seminars across North America to doctors, trainers, and athletes. What he found was that these guys, even the medical professionals, didn't know squat about weight training injuries or how to fix them. Instead they spread myths ("Squats are bad for your knees"), misdiagnosed their p...

The Staley Principles An Interview with Charles Staley by Chris Shugart Charles Staley is a good 'ol boy. In redneck-ese, that means he's a good guy who does a good job. I also get the sense that he's one of us. A self-described "frustrated athlete," training and sports never came easy for him. Not blessed with great genetics, he had to really dig into the books, study up, and work twice as hard in the gym ...

Exercises You've Never Tried  —  Volume 1 by Chris Shugart and TC Think for a minute about the exercises you've used this week in your workouts. For chest you probably did the bench press. How boring! For legs, we'll bet you did a barbell back squat and maybe some leg curls. How passe! Did you do biceps curls, too? Ha! Old fashioned! Ab crunches? Dude, that's so five minutes ago. Okay, ...

Hypertrophy-Specific Training An Overview and Sample Program by Bryan Haycock Note: If you missed it, be sure to read our interview with Bryan Haycock titled Mr. Hypertrophy in last week's edition of T-mag. Recently, there's been a buzz about Bryan's new training program called Hypertrophy-Specific Training or HST. According to Bryan, most weight-training programs are based not on principles of muscle growth, but on ...

Mr. Hypertrophy An Interview with Bryan Haycock by Chris Shugart Bryan Haycock has been quietly making waves in the bodybuilding community for over 23 years. He's a physiologist who's worked as a writer, editor, and as a consultant for the sports supplement industry. He's built a reputation on applying hard science to all aspects of bodybuilding. Recently, there's been a buzz about Bryan's new hypertrophy training program, HS...

"Viking Heaven?" I asked. "Is that another name for Thailand?" The country in known by many monikers — Siam, The Land of Smiles, The Fifth Tiger — just to name a few.

Bangkok, he decides, is a drug. It is, in fact, all drugs, an adaptagen that becomes whatever he needs.

They told him he'd be changed. They told him the city would magnify his faults, amplify the dark half of his soul, and dull the things about him that were pure and good. They said he'd forget himself.

Guest Atomic Dog Bodybuilding is Dead by Chris Shugart The Atomic Dog is a weekly feature that isn't necessarily about weight training or bodybuilding. Sometimes it's about sports in general, sex, women, or male issues of some kind. At times it's inspirational, but it can also be informative, funny, and even a little weird, but hopefully, always interesting and a little controversial. We hope it reflects the nature of Testosterone magazine in ...

Stuff We Like Consumer Reports for Bodybuilders by John Koenig and Chris Shugart There are literally thousands of bodybuilding tools on the market today. These include exercise gadgets, athletic training devices, books, videos, and supplements. They run the gamut from complete garbage to products you shouldn't live without. It's probably no surprise to you that most of these toys and tools fall into the recycle bin category. Therefo...

The car in front of me was being searched. The Border Patrol officer made the driver get out and open the hood.

Dawg School — Basic Training for Beginners The Bodybuilder's Hierarchy of Needs by Chris Shugart   Back in 1943, a psychologist named Abraham Maslow proposed a sweeping theory on human motivation. It's now known as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In a nutshell, it says that in order for you to fulfill your potential, you must meet a series of needs. The needs start off very basic (hunger, thirst, shelter) and progress to higher needs ...

The Essential Berardi A stripped down overview of JB's dietary wisdom by Chris Shugart   Testosterone has undoubtedly the best group of contributors on the planet. They're like a professional sports team representing the upper echelon of all the guys that ever stepped onto the playing field. Through years of education, experimentation, and practical experience, they've risen to the top of their respective fields. When you're playing o...

Guest Atomic Dog Good Old Fashioned Sex by Chris Shugart   The Atomic Dog is a weekly feature that isn't necessarily about weight training or bodybuilding. Sometimes it's about sports in general, sex, women, or male issues of some kind. At times it's inspirational, but it can also be informative, funny, and even a little weird, but hopefully, always interesting and a little controversial. We hope it reflects the nature of Testosterone ...