Here is a video to help clear up what form should look like on a stiff leg deadlift with dumbbells or a kettlebell! There are a lot of common mistakes that I would like to point out so you reduce the chances of injury and increase the chances of gaining strength and muscle!
This is a solid exercise for your posterior chain!!
I hope everyone is having a great week and enjoys the weekend!
-Alex Costa-
I am back with another video today! I am going to show you a shouler burnout circuit that will blow those shoulders up! It is 3 simple exercises in a row. I do these for my workouts and some clients workouts here an there. They are a challenge. Do these for 15 reps each exercise then rest. Then do 2 more rounds to make 3 all together!
Hope everyone had a great week!
-Alex Costa-
I am posting videos daily so don’t miss out on any knowledge or entertainment, subscribe today so you don’t miss a video!
I came up with this exercise about 8 months ago and like to throw it in every now and then. I love the movement, try it out and use this next time you hit abs! This is day #30 of my daily video content project!
Hope everyone has a great Halloween and enjoys the day!
-Alex Costa-
Having trouble with push ups? Here is a video that will help bump up that number! I hope evryone is doing well! I’ll see you all tomorrow with another video!
-Alex Costa-
Happy Sunday everyone, hope you had a great weekend! Sorry the video is kinda late today, but I am bringing you an exercise I came up with a while back. It is solid for developing your rear deltoids (muscles in the back of your shoulder) this also creates a lot of stability in my shoulders for when I bench press. This is a solid exercise to try, I HIGHLY recommend it! Try it out and let me know what you think!
I will see you all tomorrow for a brand new video!
-Alex Costa-
I am excited to bring you something I will be doing for this month of October! This is my introduction video to the whole month of DAILY CONTENT. I will be posting a video to YouTube and Costafitness.org EVRYDAY this month. The videos will be over a lot whether its a vlog for your entertainment or a nutrional video, exercise tips, speed/agility, Q&A, or even one of our workouts, you will have something NEW EVERYDAY! Sometimes the computer I use has issues uploading but we’re going for broke here! Tune in everyday to both platforms and see what I post to help you! I will probably have the daily post up anywhere around 9am -12pm each day. I hope you guys enjoy this, I am excited to bring you all of this free content!!
Make sure you click the link below the video here and hit the “SUBSCRIBE” button on my YouTube page so you never miss a video!
Thank you for the support, I hope you all have a great start to your week!
-Alex Costa-
Hello everyone, welcome back to the website. In todays post I would like to go into more detail with this workout Wednesday. If you are following me on Instagram then you will usually see a post on Wednesday evening which will hold a workout of some type. I will do the same thing today on my Instagram. Follow me on Instagram @costalottamoney1
I will post the exercise videos in this post below. You will perform this circuit of exercises for as many rounds as possible in 12 minutes. So what I will do is set a timer on my phone and whenever it goes off at the end I write down how many rounds I have completed. If I get through 5 the first time, I try to go for 6 the next time I go to take on that workout again. Now just because you want to try getting through the workout and complete more in the same amount of time that next time you do the same workout, doesn’t mean speed through the reps and make them sloppy. I want you to aim for quality repetitions.
This workout will not last very long but will make up when it comes to intensity of the training session. It is important that you implement a proper warm up before starting and a cool down afterwards. I would do about 5-10 minutes on a bike or elliptical for the warm up and for the cool down, I like to do some walking lunges and light stretching.
Now let me give you the exercises in order here below:
So there you have it, hit up this workout and let me know how many rounds you got through! I have been thinking about doing something big starting in October to help you all out! I am really excited to announce it but for now I have to wait and make sure I have everything ready for it. I also have other announcements I will make when I make that one as well. I hope everyone is having a great week and a good start to fall! Hit me up if you have any questions!!
-Alex Costa-
I want to start you off this week with 1 core exercise you should be implementing into your workouts for maximum strength and stability. This one will rock your world! haha
This exercise is called a long lever pelvic tilt plank, kind of a mouth full. The difference between a normal plank and this one is the elbow positioning. The elbows will come up to about eye level. As you can see in the image below, a normal plank will have about a 70-90 degree holding position with the elbows. This will mean that with the elbows being practically right underneath of the heavy part of the body, it will be the easiest of the plank positions to hold up. I am not saying a plank is easy because if you have a weak core then you will think otherwise.
Now, with the long lever pelvic tilt plank, (image below) you will see how our elbow positioning will make about a 100-110 degree angle. This will lead to less stability underneath the base of our body in this exercise. Which in turn leads this to a more difficult exercise to perform. This leaves your core shaky and begging for a break because of how tight you have to keep the core. This will also leave the core in a very slight stretched position compared to a normal plank. This is an isometric exercise so usually the muscle will be neither stretched nor relaxed, it falls into the middle.
This is an exercise that will active all areas of the core. Lower, upper, internal/external obliques, transversus abdominis, rectus abdominis. That is what I really like about this exercise, it hits the WHOLE core area even the lower back.
Try this out for a few weeks! If you only do it once, you won’t want to do it again haha so make yourself stronger and do it for a few weeks. I do about 3-4 sets of 30 second holds. You can do this exercise as many days as you want due to it being an isometric exercise, you won’t really be as sore as if you were to do a normal crunch with a complete eccentric and concentric movement.
I hope everyone is having a great Monday! Have an awesome week and hit me up if you have any questions!
-Alex Costa-
If you are looking to add some height to that vertical of yours then listen up and try this workout! I thought I would give the basketball players some love today! haha
On a real note, I am posting a quick video to help increase your vertical! This workout will be revolved around jump training to help produce more bounce. I like the way this workout is designed because I made it to max out power with the box jumps, then work a little more fast twitch fibers with the alternating lunge jumps. Note that you will see I incorporate a basketball so that basketball players can add an “in game” scenario. If you are not a basketball player, you can still benefit from these movements but keep an eye out for a big article coming up on increasing your vertical soon! Like, maybe next week;)
Okay, lets get to the workout! As I always stress with my athletes and clients, start of with a warm up, preferably a dynamic warm up. Then we start with our first exercise, front squats with dumbbells. If you do not know how to do these exercises, don’t worry! I have a video at the bottom to help you. We will perform this exercise for 4×10 reps. I want this to be an explosive movement on the way up! Check out the form and how I hold the dumbbells for this exercise in the video.
Next will be alternating lunge jumps with dumbbells. This will be done for 4 sets of 6 each leg (12 total). Don’t let the form break down, keep the chest up and explode through this movement.
3rd exercise is where we will need a ploy box. We have box jumps with a pivot step. WATCH THE VIDEO AT THE BOTTOM and you will understand. Make sure you make the pivot strong and jump up to the box after. We will do this 4 x 4, this will ensure you can get a little power out of the jumps.
The last exercise we will complete is box jumps with a reverse pivot step. These box jump variations are perfect for post players in basketball but as I said earlier, it will still benefit you as well!
I hope this helps you basketball players and coaches out there for a quick, efficient workout. You can do this 2-3 times a week for faster results. I hope you all have a great Friday and enjoy the weekend!
If you are interested in my 1 on 1 personal training & online training then please contact me and we can discuss details and how we can get you to where you want to be! I am taking athletes of all sports and gym goers as well.
Contact me through email:
Costafitness1@gmail.com
-Alex Costa-
Everyone enjoys having a nice set of quads wether you are a guy looking to have a complete physique or a girl trying to have a nice set of legs. I want to show you all one of my absolute favorite quad exercises. I will also dig into some history of this exercise as well as some anatomy. With no further ado, lets jump into todays article!
I’m sure you have all heard of the exercise called a sissy squat. When you hear this name and don’t know what the exercise is then you may overlook this due to its name. However I want to show you why you should be incorporating this exercise into your training!
Lets start with a basic anatomy session of the quadriceps.
The quads are made up of 4 main muscles (quad = 4). These muscles are the rectus femoris, which is the top, front muscle. It is hard to isolate, this muscle is more visible through less body fat. Then we have the vastus intermedius which is deeper underneath the quad muscles, directly below the rectus femoris. The vastus lateralis is the quad muscle that is located on the outside of the quad. Building this can add that wide look to the front leg. Lastly, we have the vastus medialis which is the inside tear drop looking muscle. The function of these muscles is to extend the knee.
We, as humans, are more quad dominate based off of how live life. We spend a lot of time walking and not always working hamstrings and other posterior chain muscle group. With that being said, it does not mean you have to work hamstrings all day. Though I try to split up leg training evenly such as hitting quads and hamstrings about the same when it comes to sets, reps and days worked. If you have a muscle imbalance, then the easiest solution usually tends to be targeting the antagonist muscle group. I’ll save that for a different day.
For anyone not familiar with Tom Platz, his leg development was just spectacular. He was a old school bodybuilder around the 80’s.
This is Tom Platz and his ginormous quads.
This man was brutal with his leg training and tried many different things. One exercise he came across was the sissy squat. He would make different variations of the sissy squat like doing the bottom of that movement during a hack squat like the image below.
One of the main people I follow that made me want to do this exercise was Julian Smith. He is a modern day bodybuilder that has some amazing total leg development as well.
This exercise gets soooooooo much hate. I can see why some think this UNTIL I tried it! Now listen, if you have knee issues or are prone to knee injuries then play it smart and skip this for now. On the other hand, if you have healthy knees and think you can handle it then I most definitely recommend trying this exercise for a few weeks. The reason I say a few weeks is because it take a few weeks to get the movement down and perform it right. It may be a little tough for your knees to get used to at first. THIS IS NORMAL, you are asking your body to do a non-functional movement that most of us have never done before. This is why I say try it for a little while because at first, I thought it would be an exercise I would throw to the side but I use this quiet often to help me grow the quads and get the separation to make the quads look nasty!
With all of this history talk and anatomy, lets get into how to perform the sissy squat! I have a short video of me going over the exercise right here below. Just hit play, learn and try it out next leg day!!
Thank you for viewing todays article! If you have any questions then leave comments below. If you have tried this exercise, tell me about your experience. Hope everyone is having a great Thursday and enjoys their day!
-Alex Costa-
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