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Here’s what we’ve got to start your weekend right:

• Micronutrient nutrition for the serious athlete.

• How to break through a plateau on the squat.

• Fixing mistakes made by hybrid athletes.

Nutrition

Micronutrients for Macro Gains

The name of the game in any sport is recovery. Indeed, the venerable Tour de France has been referred to as “an eating and sleeping contest,” because of how vital it is to get the right sustenance.

If you’re already getting enough food and sleep for your goals, you’re doing great. But are your micronutrients in order? Are you so obsessed with healthy eating that you have actually removed necessary nutrition from your diet?

You might want to go ahead and pick that salt shaker back up if your sodium levels are depleted, and if you don’t live a luxurious, beach bum lifestyle, odds are your body could be thirsting for some Vitamin D. It’s time to go back to chemistry class with our breakdown of seven of the most important micronutrients for athletes.

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Exercise Tips

A Slump Buster

If you’ve breezed through your blissful newbie gains and remain confused as to why adding five pounds to your back squat every week is no longer humanly possible, there’s no need to quit lifting and take up pickleball.

Instead, you’ve simply entered into what is known as a plateau, and you just need to find a way to bust out of it. Lucky for you, we’ve compiled a list of form tips, support exercises, and other assorted hacks to help you get back on track.

Hideous movements like the 1 ¼ squat and focusing on your breathing aren’t necessarily sexy enough to post on Instagram. But they will make you stronger. Isn’t that why you’re here in the first place?

Training

Hybrid Tips

Fergus Crawley is a notable hybrid athlete who’s as accomplished in powerlifting as he is in endurance sports like running and swimming. And as you’d suspect, these types of athletes don’t have the luxury of committing all their training to just strength or just endurance, as each discipline competes for whatever resources the body has available.

Athletes like this are asking a lot of their bodies, but they also need to be able to give a lot to their bodies. That means not only calories, sleep, and physical recovery modalities, but also sometimes going easier during training and knowing when to slow down.

Crawley recently took to YouTube to talk about his training and offered some advice for anyone looking to follow in his footsteps.

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Everything Else

Movin’ On Up

• Used by pros for decades, the Jefferson squat is an old-timey exercise that will draw plenty of attention in the gym while seriously boosting your leg day. Start using it today to beef up your quads.

• Former World’s Strongest Man Martins Licis crosses another never-done-before test of strength off his list by pressing the 280-pound Scottish Fianna Stone over his head.

• Watch former WWE Superstar Rick Boogs live every meathead’s dream as he cashes in his golden ticket on a visit to Ultra Flex, a gym full of brand-spanking-new bodybuilding equipment he has never before dared dream of existing.