7 websites to stay fit and strong

I personally wish i would have had an overview like this when I started out with training. It takes some time to seperate the crap from the good websites and the bad from the good instructors. Here is an overview of what I found to work for me and on each of these pages I found workouts and knowledge which are being used and taken advantage of in my family.

Stronglift 5x5

Stronglift 5x5 is a great place to start your fitness and strength journey, especially when your focus is on getting stronger. Mehdi explains all of the different movements in all the detail needed, gives advise and has videos to show what and what not to do.

There is also an app available for download which I have personally used with success. If you subscribe to his emails you will get motivational material to pull you through the different workouts. For me this has been tested with success. The website is not the shiniest in the world and only features Mehdi's opinions, so you will be hard pressed to find anything not agreeing to the methods of Stronglift 5x5, but I think that is just a minor detail.

Breakingmuscle

Breakingmuscle is for my tastes geared towards Crossfitters mainly and to runners secondly as a part of the crossfit fitness regime. Here you will find articles on how to master the muscle up, pistol squat, butterfly pull up, strategies for rowing, deadlifting; you name it. The main advantages of this website from my point of view are that you have a lot of different experts with different opinions and approaches to the same goals enabling you to be more critical about training methods and that the website is not very commercial. Some of the articles are a bit fluffy from my perspective, but I could be accused of the same.

There are also articles about injury prevention and how to maintain your body as flexibility and mobility is a huge topic for crossfitters. This is also something you won't necessarily find to the same extent on the other sites on this list.

Powerlifting to win

Powerlifting to win is the website I turn to most at the moment, because I am figuring out my next powerliftng program after stronglifts 5x5 and doing a 6 week 10x3 cycle.

This website goes in depth into the pros and cons of different grip width, stances, powerlifting templates, accessory work and training principles. The analyses are methodical and mathematical. If you are not serious about powerlifting and being able to lift more weight do not go near this page, because I am very positive that it will bore the life out of you.

For everybody else the greatest asset of this side is the free pdf which pitches the most popular training programs like smolov, madcow etc. against each other for recommendations.

Beyondthewhiteboard

Beyondthewhiteboard is a tool to log your workout results and a website which provides information about how and why to train. It is very close to the crossfit universe, as gyms in the states tend to use this software to track the progress of their members.

I am using the software myself to track my progress and also use screenshots for my blog here. If you sign up for the software, i personally find the most interesting part to be able to compare your results world wide and how good you really are. I would consider myself one of the fittest in my local gym (i hold the bench press record to back that claim up ;)), but I am just slightly above mid field on beyond the whiteboard.

The team at beyondthewhiteboard does a good job of analysing the vast amount of data they have at their fingertips to produce well founded hypothesis about how you can train to get to the crossfit games and whether or not age is a limiting factor in achieving this.

Bodybuilding.com

This is the most commercial website on my list, but it has great material especially on the scientific side of things about muscle growth and how and why you can make your muscles grow. It is also the only site on this list where you get pretty direct access to making a purchase of supplements and other equipment while still getting a bit of knowledge into you.

Bodybuilding.com is a tight run ship which is geared towards making money and you can feel that on their website. If this does not put you off the upshot of this is, that the got the best experts tallking about how to train and their instructional videos are one of the most polished and professionally made ones I have seen on the internet. Just be aware, that they might want to spin something in a certain direction, where the other websites I've recommended might be a bit more down to earth and honest.

Hal Higdon

This is the website to go for all of you who are starting out to get serious about running. I have used his advise and programs which comes for free to run three marathons so far with a best of 3:58. Currently I am progressing to a more personalised style of training, but his templates have proven in time,m that they work and there is also an app available nowadays, which I personally have not used yet.

If you do not want to bulk up and get stringer but lose fat I found running to be the single most successful approach for me.

Bikinibodymommy

This made the list because of my girlfriend who is following this program successfully for quite a while now. The workouts train strength and conditioning which can be easily done at home. The program includes Interval training where you do as many reps as possible of a certain movement in 30 seconds time with some rest inbetween. The duration of each workout is roughly around 30 minutes.

This website works great to encourage women who just had a baby to lose weight. There are tons of other like minded mommies on this page telling their story to encourage you. Also Briana, your host, is very likeable for my tastes, as she lets you take part on her own life, hving her little kid and husband jump about and admitting to her on shortcomings.

There is also a dietary plan which comes with the instructional videos. Most of the programs are free, but geared towards selling you some of the premium Bikinibodymommy stuff.

Nerdfitness

Nerdfitness is a website aimed at Nerds who want to get fit (surprised? ;)). Generally this website is also more geared towards strength training and less for cardio training. What I like about the approach of Nerdfitness is that they have a lot of before and after tests and analyses for isolated programs.

This will help you to determine which kind of workout is the right one to pick against of your goals. The other websites are more descriptive and lack a bit of content on this part of things for my tastes.