I probably spend too much time thinking about rowing. Last year I set my gym-sights on (and barely...
Category - Train Hard
It’ll make you better at everything
5 things you can learn from pick-up artists (that won’t make you a terrible human)
If you read about ‘negging’, or ‘bitch-shields’ or anything Julien Blanc has ever done, you’d be forgiven for thinking that pick-up artists are, to a man, terrible, punchable people. This is sort of true: anyone who actually...
Training for the Robopocalypse: because zombies are so last century
Still training for a zombie apocalypse? That’s cute. Everyone from Elon Musk to Bill Gates agrees – what you should really be worrying about is the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence. Self-driving cars and...
Antifragile Fitness: why you should fast more, sprint less…and do press-ups all the time
Life is tough, and also unpredictable. Nicholas Taleb has made a literary career out of pointing this out – after making at least two fortunes betting on it as a risk analyst. To massively oversimplify the theory he puts...
Superman vs Tyler Durden: why (almost) everyone is thinking about body transformations wrong
Hat-tip to @ultrabrilliant for the gif. When you’ve read this, go and look at otherplaces.co.uk These days, it’s not even close. According to the search traffic, people are Googling ‘Henry Cavill workout plan’ something like...
How to do more pullups this month (you’re gonna need a bigger back)
Pull-ups: they’re officially the new bench press. Now that everyone’s agreed (right?) that having a Batman-style v-taper looks better than maintaining a ludicrously oversized set of pecs – and that being able to haul...
Does Tabata work? Yes, but you’ll never want to do it again
Here’s a question: can you really do a workout that lasts less than four minutes? Yes. Here’s a better question: once you’ve done it, will you ever want to do one again? Here’s a little story. I once went to watch world...
Ask Live Hard: getting ripped and cooking shirtless
[Ed’s note: Ask Live Hard is a semi-regular column where I address questions from readers. If you’d like some advice that’ll probably include ‘Deadlift more’ or ‘Stop being a baby’ you...
You can’t get it done with a sprint: life lessons from a fast 5k
So recently, I’ve been re-addressing my 5k run time. My best ever is 21:19, and 22:00 is really the standard to stay below at all times, but I’d like to have a go at getting sub-20. Maybe I’ll make this, maybe I won’t. But...
Lifting weights will make you better at everything
[Ed note: I wrote this for something else which never saw the light of day, so it’s a bit more aggressive than usual.] There are many fine and productive things you could do during your lunch hour. You could learn some of...