Wednesday, May 22, 2013

The Biggest Fat Loss Exercise Mistake:


Fat loss is by far the most common goal in the fitness industry.  (Have you ever met anyone who wanted to ADD body fat?  Me neither…)

Which begs the question, why do so many people fail to achieve it?  Of course there are several reasons, but when it comes to exercise methodologies that factor into losing body fat, there is a very common yet quite obvious mistake exercisers make:

Mistake: When starting on a fat loss program, many exercisers exercise with the intention of burning calories instead of raising their metabolism.

Your metabolism, or resting metabolic rate, is how many calories you will burn in a 24 hour period at rest.  

Yes, age and genetics are a factor in what your RMR is but yours can always be improved. 

IF YOU EXERCISE WITH THE INTENTION OF RAISING IT. 

With effective exercise, one can raise their metabolism and be burning more calories 24/7/365.

Even a small increase in your metabolism can reduce your body fat levels significantly.  Do the math – if you can get your body to burn only 100 more calories per day (not much), on its own while you’re resting, that’s over 10 pounds of body fat you will lose in one year.  Not 10 pounds total – ten pounds of FAT.

But because of the short sightedness of many exercise programs, many (most?) people focus on the caloric expenditure of each individual workout. 

To me this is like counting your calories at one meal of the day but ignoring everything else you eat and drink all day – just doesn’t make any sense.

The focus should be on what each workout does to improve your metabolism.

Was it intense enough to force your metabolism to adjust and rise?  Or was it of little consequence and you stopped burning calories as soon as you stopped the workout? (Which is a VERY common mistake…)

The way to know the answers to these questions is far too expansive to get into in a blog post, but some good rules of thumb are:

  • Was the intensity high and/or was it difficult to complete?  If yes, it probably raised your RMR.

  • Was it long duration?  If so, you probably didn’t do much to your metabolismBy definition, the longer a workout is, the more the intensity has to drop.

  • Has it been done consistently?  If yes, then your metabolism is probably on the way up.  If no, then your workout was just a masochistic ass-kicking.
If your goal is to lose body fat - and again, whose isn't - don't focus on the short term caloric expenditure of a workout, which frankly is irrelevant information.  Make the workouts efficient and metabolism raising and you'll see the changes that you seek.



Wednesday, May 15, 2013

100% Guaranteed Way to Fail:


I’ve been doing this a long time so I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t.  This doesn’t make me better or smarter than anyone; it just means I’ve observed many people try to be more healthy and fit.  Few succeed. Exponentially more fail.  This is a harsh reality, but a reality nonetheless.

And one of the things I’ve noticed is that a GREAT way to fail is to try to accomplish your goals quickly.  

Look for the short term, quick fix.  This is the 100% guaranteed way to not get what you want.

If I’ve learned one thing over the years it’s this: There is no short term, quick fix solution.

Not one. 

Never has been, never will be.

If you are looking for an easy, short cut way to your fitness goals I can tell you unequivocally it…does…not…exist.

The people who achieve great successes in the exercise realm are invariably people who seek and attain small, incremental improvements over time.  When consistently applied, the philosophy and application of simply just improving a little bit at a time adds up much more quickly than you think.

People who succeed:
  • Understand it takes time, patience and perseverance.
  • Think long term
  • Stay focused on the goal
  • Measure their progress against where they were and where they are now
  • Run their own race and compete against themselves
  • Exercise and move deliberately, making sure each rep and set is perfect

People who DO NOT succeed:
  • Try to do more than they can both in the gym and with their eating habits.
  • Think “what can I do in the next “X” number of days?” (i.e., "I'm going to lose 10 pounds in 10 days!)
  • Change just for changes’ sake
  • Measure their progress by an arbitrary number like “I can bench press X pounds…” “I want to weigh X pounds…”
  • Compare their successes and failures to those of others – in most cases very apples and oranges
  • Mistake activity for accomplishment and improvement

The late great coach John Wooden once said: “Don’t look for the big quick improvement.  Seek the small improvement one day at a time.  That’s the only way it happens - and when it happens it lasts.”

Great advice coach – that’s been my observational experience as well.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Insane


Like with most of my blogs, this blog comes from having answered a particular question a few thousand times so clearly it’s a large enough issue that I can get it out there for everybody.

Today’s (and yesterday’s, and tomorrow’s) question:

Are all these “extreme” workouts such as Insanity, Tapout XT, Crossfit, etc., effective?

Answer: No.

The reasons for that are numerous and mostly have to do with bio-mechanics, physiology, and programming (or lack thereof, which is the real issue) which bores the heck out of most people.  So I’ll focus on one of the major rebuttals from people who promote these workouts when I say “No”.

Typically, the rebuttal goes something like this:  But the people who do it look great, they have low body fat, they have muscles, etc.

And I find myself saying this often:

The people doing those workouts can do them because they are in great shape.  They are not in great shape because they do those workouts.

Which is why when average John and Jane Doe, who don’t start off in great shape try things like plyometrics to exhaustion, power moves to exhaustion, or anything else that marketing geniuses (not trainers) call “extreme” or “insane”, they invariably attain chronic or acute injuries or reach a state of diminishing returns pretty quickly.

The people you see doing those “insane” workouts are generally young, and generally fit based on their structures.  They can get away with risky exercise behaviors.  The other 99.9% of us cannot.

I know there’s something in our ever transforming society that finds anything “extreme” or “insane” appealing.  When I was doing a little research for this I saw ads for “Extreme Couponing” and “Intense Dance”.

Seriously? Come on...

But that doesn’t mean because there is an appeal that it makes any sense because anything insane is…well…insane.