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“I rely on free weights to build mass. Machines and cables to me are more for adding detail to the muscle, which you also need.” -Kevin Levrone

With perfectly-shaped mountains of muscle flowing on a frame accentuated by classic symmetry, Kevin Levrone caused jaws to drop on stages the world over. No wonder this IFBB Hall of Fame bodybuilder was known as the “uncrowned Mr. Olympia.” Kevin is also a musician, and in 1995 he released his first training tape/DVD, titled “Full Blown.” It became immensely popular, in part because fans identified with his blue-collar work ethic and were astonished at his incredible feats of strength in the gym. People have always held a special respect and admiration for men who were every bit as strong as they looked, and Levrone was a true powerhouse. Now Kevin shares training tips from his legendary video, “Full Blown.” Here’s how he introduced it: “This video is about hardcore training. It’s about being psyched and staying positive, and it’s about making your dreams come true.”

Flat or Incline Dumbbell Press. “You want to do four sets, 8-10 reps, or sometimes 10-12 depending on how you feel that day. Once you get into those heavy dumbbells, like 120s and up, it’s good to have a spotter and training partner to help push it and motivate you through this. I also believe in stretching the pecs out hard between sets. It really opens them up and allows for a better pump, as well as helping to prevent injury.”

Cable Crossovers. “We normally do about four sets on this, with the reps around 12-15. I go for a lot of feeling. Flex and squeeze the chest on every rep. Inhale on the stretch and exhale with the effort. This is pretty much a shaping exercise, bringing deep striations into your chest. A lot of times I will drop the weight down on the last set and do 20-25 reps, which really lets me feel it and get my mind into the muscle. Pump it up, because in bodybuilding, if you’re not giving it your all, someone else is.”

Dumbbell Front Lateral Raises. “I do 10-12 reps each arm, alternating arms. You don’t have to worry so much about flexing and squeezing here. The anterior delt will contract fully once the dumbbell is up to your shoulder level and controlling the negative rather than simply letting it drop stretches the muscle.”

Dumbbell Side Laterals. “A lot of people always ask me how I got my shoulders this big or what I do for shoulders. A lot of it is genetics, but it also takes concentration and dedication. Lateral raises hit that outer, medial head of your shoulders so they get nice and round and give your torso a better taper. Presses are critical, but you need those laterals to get round delts.”

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Dumbbell Bent Rear Lateral Raises. “The rear delts are so important for having complete delts that look great from any angle. If yours are lagging, it will really hurt all your back and side poses. You don’t need to go super heavy on these, but you do always want to do them in a controlled fashion or else the traps and upper back take over.”

Reverse-Grip Barbell Rows. “I’d always done barbell rows, but I never used the reverse/curl grip on them until I got a back workout over in England with Dorian Yates. It’s a very basic free-weight movement, so I keep the reps around 8-10, even as low as six on my heaviest set of 405. I use straps to reinforce my grip and put chalk on the bar. Coming from a powerlifting background, I always felt I gained 5 pounds of muscle every time I saw that chalk on my hands!”

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One-Arm Dumbbell Rows. “This is my other favorite movement for building back thickness, and I like doing it right after barbell rows. My back is already warmed up, so I start with a 120 and pyramid up to 150 pounds. Don’t just yank the weight up. Flex and squeeze the lat with force at the top of each rep, even if it’s very briefly.”

Seated Cable Rows. “I like these as my third exercise for back, and normally do four sets of 12 reps. Generally on free-weight exercises I like to do six to eight reps, but I go higher here with the cable because I’m concentrating on form. I rely on free weights to build mass. Machines and cables to me are more for adding detail to the muscle, which you also need.”

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Lat Pulldowns. “Most guys do these first, but I prefer doing various types of rows to work more on thickness (Note: at this time, Dorian Yates was Mr. Olympia, and he had the thickest back ever seen). Pulldowns work the outer portion of the lats so you can get wider. Form is important here and you want a complete range of motion. You should feel your lats stretching at the start of the rep, and no rep is complete until the bar hits your upper chest, and your elbows are driven all the way back and down.”

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Alternate Dumbbell Curls. “Form is important on these of course, but even more important is flexing and squeezing the biceps. I rotate the hand as I curl so that at the end of the rep my pinkie is higher than my thumb. It’s OK to use a little swing to get the dumbbells up as long as you get that squeeze. It also helps you overload the biceps with more weight. I go up to 70s.”

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Handsome Muscular Men Exercise With Weights

Seated Dumbbell Hammer Curls. “These work the brachialis muscle between the lateral head of the triceps and the long head of the biceps to give the upper arm more thickness. There is no twisting here. You grip the dumbbell like a hammer with your thumbs up. I alternate and do sets of six to eight reps per arm, and I do them seated so I don’t lean into the working arm as much as I lift.”

EZ-Bar Curls. “The cambered shape of this bar takes pressure off the wrists and allows you to put the stress more on the biceps, not your wrists. I still do six to eight reps on these.”

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Muscular Men Exercise With Weights. He is performing barbell biceps curls

Facebook: Official.Kevin.Levrone
Twitter: Levrone Nutrition @LevroneSupps

Instagram @kevinlevrone

@levrone_signature_series

The post Best Training Tips to Build More Muscle appeared first on FitnessRX for Men.

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By: Team FitRx
Title: Best Training Tips to Build More Muscle
Sourced From: www.fitnessrxformen.com/training/best-training-tips-to-build-more-muscle/
Published Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2023 16:19:23 +0000

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EDM

LISTEN: DVBBS Tap Jeremih & SK8 for Genre-Bending Summer Anthem, “Crew Thang”

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Canadian brothers DVBBS have joined forces with Grammy-nominated R&B artist Jeremih and singer-songwriter SK8 in their latest single, “Crew Thang.” This dynamic track combines captivating melodies and groovy house basslines, complemented by vibrant vocals that strike the perfect balance between sensuality and enjoyment. It serves as an ideal anthem to launch the summer season, offering an unforgettable experience and encouraging everyone to embrace their own unique style on and off the dance floor. “Crew Thang” follows the duo’s recent release, “Synergy” featuring Timmy Trumpet, and we can’t wait to hear what they have in store for us next. Stream the single below and stay tuned for the official music video of “Crew Thang,” which will be released very soon.

DVBBS – Crew Thang | Stream

LISTEN: DVBBS Tap Jeremih & SK8 for Genre-Bending Summer Anthem, “Crew Thang”

The post LISTEN: DVBBS Tap Jeremih & SK8 for Genre-Bending Summer Anthem, “Crew Thang” appeared first on Run The Trap: The Best EDM, Hip Hop & Trap Music.

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By: Max Chung
Title: LISTEN: DVBBS Tap Jeremih & SK8 for Genre-Bending Summer Anthem, “Crew Thang”
Sourced From: runthetrap.com/2023/05/28/listen-dvbbs-tap-jeremih-sk8-for-genre-bending-summer-anthem-crew-thang/
Published Date: Sun, 28 May 2023 12:57:57 +0000

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Tech

ChatGPT is going to change education, not destroy it

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The response from schools and universities was swift and decisive.

Just days after OpenAI dropped ChatGPT in late November 2022, the chatbot was widely denounced as a free essay-writing, test-taking tool that made it laughably easy to cheat on assignments.

Los Angeles Unified, the second-­largest school district in the US, immediately blocked access to OpenAI’s website from its schools’ network. Others soon joined. By January, school districts across the English-speaking world had started banning the software, from Washington, New York, Alabama, and Virginia in the United States to Queensland and New South Wales in Australia.

Several leading universities in the UK, including Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge, issued statements that warned students against using ChatGPT to cheat.

“While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-­thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success,” Jenna Lyle, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education, told the Washington Post in early January.

This initial panic from the education sector was understandable. ChatGPT, available to the public via a web app, can answer questions and generate slick, well-structured blocks of text several thousand words long on almost any topic it is asked about, from string theory to Shakespeare. Each essay it produces is unique, even when it is given the same prompt again, and its authorship is (practically) impossible to spot. It looked as if ChatGPT would undermine the way we test what students have learned, a cornerstone of education.

But three months on, the outlook is a lot less bleak. I spoke to a number of teachers and other educators who are now reevaluating what chatbots like ChatGPT mean for how we teach our kids. Far from being just a dream machine for cheaters, many teachers now believe, ChatGPT could actually help make education better.

Advanced chatbots could be used as powerful classroom aids that make lessons more interactive, teach students media literacy, generate personalized lesson plans, save teachers time on admin, and more.

Educational-tech companies including Duolingo and Quizlet, which makes digital flash cards and practice assessments used by half of all high school students in the US, have already integrated OpenAI’s chatbot into their apps. And OpenAI has worked with educators to put together a fact sheet about ChatGPT’s potential impact in schools. The company says it also consulted educators when it developed a free tool to spot text written by a chatbot (though its accuracy is limited).

“We believe that educational policy experts should decide what works best for their districts and schools when it comes to the use of new technology,” says Niko Felix, a spokesperson for OpenAI. “We are engaging with educators across the country to inform them of ChatGPT’s capabilities. This is an important conversation to have so that they are aware of the potential benefits and misuse of AI, and so they understand how they might apply it to their classrooms.”

But it will take time and resources for educators to innovate in this way. Many are too overworked, under-resourced, and beholden to strict performance metrics to take advantage of any opportunities that chatbots may present.

It is far too soon to say what the lasting impact of ChatGPT will be—it hasn’t even been around for a full semester. What’s certain is that essay-writing chatbots are here to stay. And they will only get better at standing in for a student on deadline—more accurate and harder to detect. Banning them is futile, possibly even counterproductive. “We need to be asking what we need to do to prepare young people—learners—for a future world that’s not that far in the future,” says Richard Culatta, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), a nonprofit that advocates for the use of technology in teaching.

Tech’s ability to revolutionize schools has been overhyped in the past, and it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement around ChatGPT’s transformative potential. But this feels bigger: AI will be in the classroom one way or another. It’s vital that we get it right.

From ABC to GPT

Much of the early hype around ChatGPT was based on how good it is at test taking. In fact, this was a key point OpenAI touted when it rolled out GPT-4, the latest version of the large language model that powers the chatbot, in March. It could pass the bar exam! It scored a 1410 on the SAT! It aced the AP tests for biology, art history, environmental science, macroeconomics, psychology, US history, and more. Whew!

It’s little wonder that some school districts totally freaked out.

Yet in hindsight, the immediate calls to ban ChatGPT in schools were a dumb

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By: Will Douglas Heaven
Title: ChatGPT is going to change education, not destroy it
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/06/1071059/chatgpt-change-not-destroy-education-openai/
Published Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2023 10:13:15 +0000

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Motor

Cool Whip: HB-Custom’s crisp Suzuki DR650 scrambler

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suzuki dr650 scrambler

Suzuki DR650 scrambler by HB-Custom
If we had to use one word to describe the bikes that roll out of Holger Breuer’s workshop, it would be ‘crisp.’ Whether he’s building a bobber or a scrambler, the man behind HB-Custom has an eye for perfect proportions and liveries that pop. Even when he’s working with a tired old Suzuki dual-sport as a donor, Holger manages to make magic.

This 1994 Suzuki DR650 came to the HB-Custom workshop in Husum, Germany, all the way from Berlin. Holger’s client actually booked two bikes in at once; an old BMW boxer to turn into a bobber for solo rides, and the Suzuki, which was destined for around-town duties and the occasional two-up jaunt.

Suzuki DR650 scrambler by HB-Custom

The bike arrived as a rolling chassis with a very loose brief, so Holger envisioned a svelte scrambler for whipping through Berlin’s city streets. He’s built a number of handsome custom Honda Dominators, and figured that he could apply the same formula to the Suzuki DR650. And he was right.

But first, the Suzuki’s well-worn motor needed attention. Holger tore it down and rebuilt it, complete with new seals and gaskets and a fresh coat of paint. This engine might be almost three decades old, but it’s clean enough to eat off of.

Suzuki DR650 scrambler by HB-CustomRead More

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By: Wesley Reyneke
Title: Cool Whip: HB-Custom’s crisp Suzuki DR650 scrambler
Sourced From: www.bikeexif.com/suzuki-dr650-scrambler
Published Date: Wed, 24 May 2023 17:01:22 +0000

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