Tips, Tricks, and Info That Actually Works

Hello Monday!

It always amazes me how quickly the weekend goes by.  I do hope the information I'm sharing with you on Monday's is really helping you break through your plateaus and achieve new results. There is nothing that will take the wind out of your sails faster than putting in all that time and not seeing the results you deserve.

Just this past weekend I was stopped by a complete stranger, asking for advice on how to get lean. He shared with me his frustrations about his body transformation due to bad information -- believe it or not, he was doing hours of cardio and cutting out certain food groups. This suggestion from a "friend" gave him almost zero results. In fact, he complained that he actually felt as though he had gained fat.  Your body is a machine -- it has to be fed every 3-4 hours a protein, carbohydrate and a healthy fat. And always remember, marketing is for the purpose of selling X amounts of units of a certain product.  Marketing is not sincerely interested in giving you knowledge and products that work wonders -- they're interested in selling hope.  Which often times ends up misleading you.

On to the good stuff.

The first article I want to share is to remind you that just because you don't see the scale moving, doesn't mean you are not making progress.  Yes, I made this point a few weeks back, but found yet another article definitely worth the reminder.

When You're Exercising But Your Body Is Not Changing

Keeping in line with the previous article. Have you ever notice that when someone is in the process of transforming their body, they often seem to be cranky and just plain not in a good space.  Assuming they are not a physique competitor, that's usually a cue that their calories are too low and/or they are way over trained.

How to Lose Weight Without Losing Your Sanity

And what Monday post would be complete without a good old reminder about one of my favorites, the importance of interval training, to decrease the wear and tear on your joints, increase your results, and cut your workout time down significantly.

Steady State Cardio vs Interval Training

So now that you have information that works ----

Get On Track and Stay On Track!

Here Are Your Final 2 Reasons To . . .

Since this is the last Monday of the month, these will be my final two research articles to help you finally abandon steady state cardio.

As you'll remember we've already discussed the negatives of steady state cardio:

• the amount of time it takes each week to get in all those hours

• the wear and tear toll it takes on your knees, hips and back

• the fact that it does not burn body fat efficiently and effectively for the time you spend

If that wasn't enough for the month, guess what else I found to help you that will help you get in shape quickly and effectively?

So what else works better than steady state cardio?  Well for one weight lifting circuits. Weight lifting circuits have been found to burn more fat and overall calories effectively.

A study was done on the "Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate".

Now for sure 800 calories is a ridiculously low amount of calories to consume (I would not suggest you try this).  But again it was for the purpose of research.  Surely no plan, no matter how well thought out, could produce any results on such a low amount of intake calories right?

Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate

Wrong!!

Aerobic group: 4 hours per week
Resistance training group: 2-4 sets of 8-15 reps. 10 exercises, three times per week.

• VO2 max increased equally in both groups (think better utilization of oxygen)

• The resistance training group lost significantly more fat and did not lose any lean body mass (LBM), even at only 800 calories per day.

• The resistance training group actually increased metabolism compared to the aerobic group which decreased metabolism.

Plain and simple.  Even consuming only 800 calories, lifting weights can actually increase your metabolism (think burn more calories just sitting at your desk).  Why is that important?  Because the more muscle you have and maintain, the easier it is to lose weight and keep it off.  Starvation diets deplete your body and cause your metabolism to slow down -- making it harder to lose weight.

One more for the road.

Contribution of anaerobic energy expenditure to whole body thermogenesis

A weight training circuit burned 71% more calories than originally thought using aerobic measures

8 minutes of weight training burned somewhere between 159 and 231 calories (used a 15 repetition scheme)

To put it plainly, you can burn a heck of a lot more calories doing a weight lifting circuit than doing steady state cardio.

So at this point, to be quite blunt and to the point, with so many options to doing steady state cardio, there are really only 4 reasons I can think of as to why you should be doing steady state:

1.)  Your treating physician has advised you to do steady state cardio

2.)  You have recently started exercising (less than 6 months on a consistent exercise routine)

3.)  You have a body fat composition that is below 10%

4.)  You have lots of free time and nothing better to do

So there you have it.  A month's worth of research on the reasons why steady state cardio doesn't work, as well as some options to try. 

Make this year, your year.  No more excuses, only results.

Get on Track and Stay on Track!

Since Slow Doesn't Work, Try This

TGIF!!!

If you checked in with me on Monday you got a great peak at what's to come for rest of the fitness world in the coming months. 

No More Steady State Cardio.  It simply doesn't give you enough bang for the buck.

If you're serious about getting rid of body fat and getting seriously lean; you now know that spending hours on any cardio machine and expecting it to transform your body, is being naive.  The research is just not supporting that idea.  Now if you have a significantly low body fat, that may be another story.  But for the majority of the people out there -- no more slow cardio.

But of course the next question ends up being, So what do I do now?  So many people have been doing steady state cardio for so long they have no idea where to go from there.  Now if you'll remember I discussed with you on Monday the idea of doing intervals.  Not rocket science by any stretch of the imagination, but man does it get results. 

However, if you're looking to get completely off of the cardio machines and try something new, check out this short clip of me getting my behind kicked with Battle Ropes (this video picks up at round 7).  Because of the nature of Battling Ropes they provide plenty of variety regarding the different movements you can do.  And WOW, talk about jacking up the heart rate and getting a total body workout -- without the banging on the joints (think hip and knee trauma from too much running).  I can't thank Jerry and Gus enough for the opportunity to work with them and get my feet wet on this experience.

There are so many ways to change it up.  Keep the variety.  I'll help with a few more videos in the coming Fridays.  Bottom line -- stop wasting time doing something that doesn't work.  More studies on the way on Monday to give you more reasons to abandon the steady state cardio theory.

Here is an idea for a little change. You might even get a little chuckle out of me getting pushed.

It's time to Get on Track and Stay on Track!