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Jim Cordova is currently one of the top fitness models in the nation in addition to being a world-ranked drug-free bodybuilder. As a result of his success, his image can be seen regularly in the majority of mainstream fitness magazines nationwide. He has accumulated over a decade of training experience working with the general public in addition to assisti[...]

Diversifying my workouts was a constant challenge for me. Some guys go to the gym and do nothing but sets of 8-10 reps, 12-15 or 6-8. When I was training, I tried to do all of those rep ranges in the same workout I'd lift heavy with low reps, light with high reps and moderate weight with moderate reps. I thought it gave my muscles an extremely well-rounded [...]

Bodyweight workouts? You may already be thinking, how tough could that be... and can they really build any muscle? Set aside your skepticism gym rats, because the answer is absolutely. The secret isn't so much in doing calisthenics-type exercises like the ones you probably did in junior high, but rather in making such moves as difficult as possible to bruta[...]

"Failure is the true test of greatness." - Herman Melville To succeed in bodybuilding, you must learn how to fail. This is not because most competitors lose, although they do. In a contest with 100 entrants, 99 will go home without the overall trophy. Still, nobody needs to practice for such placings. Nor is it because all humans, with the possible excepti[...]

It’s quite the shock when a novice lifter runs into his first plateau, and simply attending the gym ceases to yield the desired results. Sadly, the honeymoon stage is over. As time continues, these plateaus become even more challenging, and we run into them more frequently. You find yourself having to add more variety to your current protocol in order to [...]

Before we tell you exactly how to build more muscle by manipulating muscle failure in your workout, allow us to break it down scientifically. Muscle failure is defined as the point in a set when you can't perform another rep with proper form. And while there's much debate over whether training to failure boosts strength, it's absolutely crucial for inducing [...]

For the most part, I built up my body in the '60s and '70s by lifting good old-fashioned free weights barbells and dumbbells as heavy as I possibly could. But as I quickly learned, to be a champion bodybuilder, you must possess not only bulk and symmetry but detail as well. And that's where another mode of weight training came into play: cables, one of th[...]

I started bodybuilding nearly twenty years ago, and during that time, I've had the opportunity to experiment with literally dozens, if not hundreds of high intensity training methods. These include supersets, giant sets, pre-exhaustion, negatives, partials, static holds, continuous tension, peak contraction, 5 sets of 5, 8 sets of 8 and 21's just to name a [...]

What's your goal for a given set during a workout? Is it to get the weight up as many times as possible? Is it to pile on maximal tonnage and see if you can lift it? The answer is bodybuilding is about training muscles, not lifting weights. Your goal should be to achieve the highest quality of muscle contraction on every rep of every set. Here are a few [...]