Build Muscle Lose Fat - Health and Fitness News

Okay, I just took a week off from training after last weekend's cycling event (see previous post). Now it's time to hit the gym hard with a completely new training routine that I'll be documenting here on a daily basis.

As I mentioned in the previous post, due to my training for my charity cycling event, I didn't do any direct leg work for a few months. Now that we're heading into winter and I'm off the cycling training program, I can hit the legs hard and get growing again. I managed to hold onto more size this summer than I did the with previous summer's cycling.

Last year, I let my body weight get too low and after the weekend cycling event was down to 161 pounds. This time, I managed to clock in at a body weight of 172.5 pounds, a big improvement and done without leg work (although I did do deadlifts for a time, which does stress the quads).

I'm dividing my training into three and working out four days per week. Yesterday's workout included delts, midback, biceps and forearms. It was a solid workout. I trained relatively hard but didn't go to failure on any of the sets. A number of the exercises were exercises I hadn't performed in months.

A few comments on my training split. Originally, I was going to use a slightly different split that is one of my favorites. I was going to again split my routine three ways but it was going to be chest, delts and triceps in one workout, legs in the second, and back, biceps and forearms in the third. I've always liked this split. However, I am experimenting with a slight change.

As you can see, I split up the back into two workouts - midback and lats. I got this idea from Steve Holman, Editor of Ironman Magazine. His thought was that to thoroughly work the back, if you did it in one workout, you wouldn't do justice to part of your back because you would be tired. While I agree with this, I like the idea of the split for another related reason.

When you work your entire back in the same workout and also work biceps, it's very difficult to do your biceps workout any justice, as the bicep gets a thorough blasting from all the back work.

Today is leg day and I'll be experimenting with an approach I find very interesting, Charles Staley's Escalating Density Training. I'll be performing squats and stiff-legged deadlifts for my leg routine. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

October 5, 2005 12:20 - Don't Break This Weight Training Rule

I just did. I didn't take my advice and now I'm paying the price. As I've mentioned previously, I took some time off from leg training to train for a fund raising cycling event. So yesterday was my first leg training workout in months. What happened?

I didn't take it easy, that's what happened. I tell everyone I train, take it easy the first few times you train, either after a layoff, or if you just haven't done a particular exercise in a while. This way, you won't suffer excruciating, maybe even debilitating muscle soreness.

And I'm suffering that soreness because I didn't take it easy enough on my leg training workout yesterday. Walking is a painful experience today. Heck, sitting is painful.

Yesterday I stuck to squats and stiff-legged deadlifts for my quad routine. And I stayed far away from failure. But I still performed too much work. It felt good to work legs again and so I forgot my own advice. I'll talk more about my actual leg training routine next time.

I just completed today's workout. This workout consisted of chest, lats and triceps. Since it was the first workout for these body parts of my new routine, I tried once again to take it easy. Most likely, I'll be quite sore due to the flye exercises for chest. The flye is a stretch position exercise, which causes more sorness,ie trauma, than other exercises for a body part, due to the stretching of the muscle. So even though I stayed away from failure, my chest is going to be sore tomorrow. Luckily, tomorrow is an off day.

October 9, 2005 11:40 - Muscle Soreness Goes Away

I've gotten through the first week of my stepped up program and the extreme muscle soreness is almost completely gone. Some adapt to muscle soreness more quickly than others.

I get sore for a workout or two when I add a new exercise I hadn't done in quite awhile, especially if it's a stretch position exercise like flyes, or incline dumbbell curls.

Friday's workout focused on delts, midback, biceps and forearms. At this point, I've taken most sets to positive failure. In another workout or two I'll be adding selected intensity techniques to certain exercises in order to ramp up the intensity and keep the muscle building gains coming into fall and winter.

I'm eating about the same as I was in the summer. Since I'm no longer cycling 100 - 150 miles a week, I shouldn't need to increase my calories dramatically to build muscle and I don't want to add a lot of fat. I'll monitor my progress and make calorie adjustments if necessary.

For the past week, I'm averaging 2,700 calories a day and and 242 grams of protein, mainly from tuna, chicken, turkey, lean red meat, and protein powder.

My current supplement schedule doesn't contain anything beyond the basics - protein powder, Essential Fatty Acids oil, HDT Fiber supplement, and a good vitamin mineral supplement.

October 10, 2005 09:31 - The Key To Losing Fat and Keeping it Off

I've said it over and over and over again that the key to losing fat, rehaping your body and keeping the fat off is weight training and not aerobics. This viewpoint has been confimed by a new study in The Journal of Anthropological and Applied Human Science. The study compared three different groups - a non exercise control group, an aerobics only exercise group and a group that combined aerobics and weight training.

As I would expect, the aerobics and weight training group lost significantly more subcutaneous abdominal fat and viceral fat (the deeper fat within the abdominal region) than the other two groups.

If you only perform aerobics in your fat loss program, at least half of your weight loss will be muscle. This will slow down your metabolism, which will make it progressively harder to lose weight and will eventually contribute to you putting that fat back on and more since your body will be less able to handle calories efficiently.

Weight training will boost your metabolism since muscle is metabolically active. For each pound of muscle you add to your body, you will burn an additional 35 to 50 calories a day, while doing nothing! This makes it much easier to keep the fat off once you lose it.

In addition, with aerobics only, unless you are genetically blessed, you will just end up with a skinny fat look once you lose weight.

Want an effective and convenient, yet short, cardio routine? Try jump rope. Yes, you can get a better cardio workout and burn more calories using a simple jump rope than you can from the equipment in your gym that cost thousands of dollars.

Jump roping works every muscle in the body, burning more calories than most lower body dominant exercises such as steppers, bikes and treadmills.

Try to stay away from very hard surfaces such as concrete. Here's a beginner routine that you can try out. A future issue will include a more advanced program.

Do a 5 minute warm up of walking or walking in place.

Perform 1 minute of skipping

1 minute of rest

Repeat this 1 minute on/1 minute off routine 4 more times for a total of 5

Add one set per week for about 4 weeks and then we'll get you to a more advanced routine.

October 11, 2005 09:19 - Weight Training Week One Over

Yesterday marked the end of the first week of my weight training routine after a week's layoff from my cycling program. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I consumed about 2,700 calories per day spread out over six meals. I need to up this amount, as my weight did not change in the past week, even without all the cycling. I need to up my calorie count this week to about 3,000 per day and see what kind of results I get from that.

Yesterday was my final workout of my weight training cycle (I have my program split into 5 different workouts). Yesterday was chest, lats, triceps and abs, with some different exercises from the previous workout for these body parts. This allows me to hit different aspects of the muscle. As my long-time newsletter readers know, I credit Steve Holman for refining the erroneous "multi-angle approach" to weight training. He explains that a muscle can only have three angles from which you can train it - midrange, stretched, and contracted. A midrange exercise is a basic movement like barbell curls or barbell bench presses. A stretch position exercise would be flyes, incline dumbbell curls or pullovers. Contracted position exercises have resistance in contracted position, such as concentration curls, pec deck flyes, or machine pullovers. So I don't train all three angles for a muscle in one workout, since this would make the routines too long and cause overtraining. I break each body part into two workouts. For example, one chest workout would work the midrange and contracted positions and the next workout for chest would work the midrange and the stretch positions.

Of course, I don't always follow Steve's POF approach to exercise selection but when I do, this is how I usually divide my workouts.

I wrote about the principles of POF and the similarities with high intensity training and Mike Mentzer's Heavy Duty program way back in the April, 2003 edition of Ironman Magazine. I'll see if I can dig that up and post it.

Leg day today. Lucky me!

October 12, 2005 09:01 - Leg Training Weight Lifting Routine

Yesterday was leg training day. I performed squats and stiff legged deadlifts using the EDT technique. Basically, I continued performing sets for 15 minutes, alternating between squats and stiff legged deadlifts. The basic idea of EDT is to increase your intensity by performing more work in the same amount of time.

The vast majority of the sets are not done to failure, except maybe the last set or two, if you have the weight correct. At this point, I ams still a little light on the weight? How do I know this?

Last workout I managed 50 reps, in 10 sets of 5 on both the squat and deadlift. I averaged 15 to 30 seconds rest between each set and that was consistent all the way through.

Yesterday, with an increased weight I again managed these numbers and was even able to add an 11th set of 2 reps each (I couldn've done more than 2 reps in the set but time stopped me) for a total of 11 sets of 52 reps.

While you want to start off with 5 rep sets (using a weight you can get 10 reps with), you should not be able to hit 5 reps on every set and you should not be able to get in that many sets. I'll bump up the weight again next workout and see how it goes. Don't get me wrong, it's still a very tough workout that has made me quite sore.

This type of training is good both for muscle mass increases and fat burning. It's almost like performing your weight training program and high intensity cardio at the same time, giving you both the benefits of building muscle and burning fat, helping you to reach your goals that much sooner.

October 13, 2005 08:52 - Does Green Tea Help With Fat Loss?

Finally, a day off. I need it. I didn't ease into my routine the way I should have and the way I recommend. I'm still sore but it's getting better. Yesterday was shoulders, midback and biceps day. Overall, it was a good workout.

On another note, have you had your green tea today? Let's set aside all the wonderful health benefits for now and take a look at green tea strictly as an aid to fat loss? Does it work and how well?

A lot of studies (both human and animal) have shown green tea has great potential for ramping up your metabolism and burning fat off your body.

One study(see below) looked at potential for green tea to stimulate thermogenesis and fat burning. This study had 10 healthy men spend periods of 24 hours in a metabolic testing chamber. During these test sessions they took either 1) green tea extract that contained 150 mg of caffeine and 270 mg of epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG - the key active ingredient of green tea), 2) 150 mg of caffeine or 3) a placebo.

So what were the results? There was no difference in thermogenesis between the caffeine group and the placebo group. The green tea extract increased 24 hour metabolism by 4% compared to the placebo group. In this case, that translates into about 80 calories a day.

What does this mean for fat loss? It means green tea can definitely be used as an aid in your weight loss efforts. A metabolism increase of 4% is significant. Now, that leads me to the other side of weight loss products and supplements.

While green tea can play a real role in your weight loss efforts, because of the way these products are advertised, people have unrealistically high expectations of what these products can do for them. If you have a resting metabolic rate of 2,000 calories per day, taking green tea can help you burn an extra 80 calories a day. This isn't a lot but does equal 7 pounds over a years time. And this is 7 pounds for doing nothing.

If you take a real fat loss aid like green tea (and there are many weight loss products that don't work at all - that's another entry), have an understanding of what you can expect. And remember, you must have a complete fat loss plan in place. If you've been gaining weight and are eating 100 more calories a day than you burn and you add green tea, guess what? You won't lose weight, you'll just slow down your weight gain.

Put an effective fat loss training program, consisting of a weight training routine, high intensity cardio and proper nutrition. Then, adding a quality supplement like green tea may help accelerate your fat loss efforts.

And don't forget, unlike a lot of the weight loss programs that don't even work, taking green tea has numerous health benefits above and beyond the fat loss aspect.

Green Tea Study - (Dulloo AG, Duret C Rohrer D, Girardier L, Mensi N, Fathi M, Chantre P, Vandermander J, Efficacy of a green tea extract rich in catechin polyphenols and caffeine in increasing 24-hour energy expenditure and fat oxidation in humans. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition1999 Dec;70(6):1040-5)

October 18, 2005 09:34 - Faster Results with Weight Training Techniques

Friday's weight training workout was chest, lats and tricep day.

After a couple of weeks of my new weight training routine, I began incorporating some intensity techniques. For example, on dumbbell flye exercises I used constant tension by stopping my reps short at the top so there was always tension on my chest.

On an exercise like shoulder presses or bench presses you would do only 2/3 of a rep. You would not go all the way to the top and lockout. By doing so without pauses, you keep the stress on the right muscle throughout the set, which increases the intensity of the set.

Some other techniques I plan on implementing are stage sets, drop sets, rest/pause, and various forms of partial rep sets. The trick is to implement intensity techqniques like this to speed up my progress without running into the overtraining wall. That's one of the key reasons to use a training diary, above and beyond just knowing which weights to use at the next training session.

Right now, I'm working on my bodybuilding supplementation program for the next few months. While I don't compete, I'm treating the next 12 months as if there were a contest at the end of it. As I mentioned previously about my charity bike ride, this is a great motivational technique for those that have trouble staying on track and being consistent with their program.

I'll discuss the bodybuilding supplementation in future posts. An important thing to keep in mind is that while I'm talking right now about building muscle mass, all these weight lifting techniques can be used very effectively for those of you that want to lose fat. Weight training and your lean body mass are the keys to taking off fat and keeping it off.

If you haven't done so, check out my fitness newsletter at http://www.buildleanmuscle.com/ezine.html

Are you interested more in bodybuilding and building maximum muscle mass? Get your free copy of Fast Mass at http://www.buildleanmuscle.com/fast-mass.html

October 20, 2005 14:58 - Faster Fat Loss and Fitnes Results

A new study was recently conducted that confirmed what I've been saying about aerobic exercise and cardio.

I've advocated high intensity interval training instead of longer duration, lower intensity cardio because it burns more calories overall, leading to faster fat loss.

A new study from McMaster University in Hamilton, Onterio, recently showed that short bursts of sprint-training exercise can be as effective as longer workouts.

A group of 8 women in their 20s performed 2 weeks of a high intensity interval training program. The program consisted of 4 to 7 sets of cycling for 30 seconds at maximum effort, followed by 4 minutes of rest, three times a week.

When compared to a control group that exercised regularly in the traditional fashion, their endurance capacity doubled. "These short bursts of exercise are as effective as an hour of daily moderate activity' says study author Martin Gibala, Ph.D.

Can't fit in your longer workouts? You don't need. By the way, this is another example of the government once again getting it wrong when it comes to our health as they want to increase the recommended daily exercise time from 20 minutes to 30 minutes.

All else being equal, it's not the quantity of your workout program, it's the quality. But don't take that to mean you can traing once a year for 5 minutes, okay?