Welcome back to 2012

So, I haven't posted in a while.  I've had a hectic last couple of months...I know, I know...welcome to the real world.  My last post was from before Thanksgiving.  Since that time, much has happened.  The holidays came & went, my son went to and graduated from Air Force basic training, and my workout partner and good friend Dave hit the century fat loss mark within 6 months of being on The Program.  It's been an exciting last few months and I expect much more excitement to come.

Regarding my own training, I've been largely in maintenance mode since beginning to train Dave.  I picked up some cool weather cycling gear and went for my first ride today in over 6 months (cool & windy, but I was feeling good).  I've been working Dave through his progressions through various mesocycles (strength to end the summer, power through Thanksgiving, and we are currently in a hypertrophy phase) and he's responded tremendously to each cycle.  We are both learning a lot through this journey together.  He's learning what it truly means to be lean and healthy.  I'm learning how to use strength and conditioning principles to help obese people get lean and regain their fitness.  The following are some key points I've learned through this experience (the list is by no means exhaustive):

1) Strength training is absolutely key to fat loss...Dave has achieved his fat loss with some HIIT cardio during the power mesocycle we did during the fall, and virtually no cardio the rest of the time.
2) Periodizing your training is fundamental as it keeps the body guessing and forces your muscles to adapt to new stimulation every 6-8 weeks spurring greater fat loss...consult a strength and conditioning specialist to figure out a good macrocycle (usually a year long broken up into mesocycles and microcycles).
3) Keep your workouts intense.  Working at the low end of the intensity range will cause you to burn some extra calories, but upping the intensity of your workouts (weight training and cardio) will send your body into fat burning overdrive.
4) All of your work in the gym will be for naught if you don't have your diet dialed in.  If most of what you're consuming is processed, crap food, you are selling yourself short.  Dave consistently tracks his caloric intake with http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ and runs under the prescribed calories for fat loss.  I've worked with him to balance his nutrient intake and the combination of these two things (controlled caloric intake + balanced nutrients) has resulted in his amazing fat loss.  Another cool thing about this approach to fat loss dieting is we gauged his caloric needs by his energy level.  As long as he didn't feel hungry & was able to put 100% effort into his workouts, we figured he was getting the foundation of what he needed from his diet with the rest coming from his fat stores.  Golden.
So, that's it for today.  We'll be transitioning to another strength mesocycle in March.  Until then, I'll be chiming in with more stories from time to time.

Fat Albert & The Gang

So Dave & I went out to a tire recycling place last Friday & picked up some used construction tires...for free. 



The pic above shows The Crew...from left to right they are: 200 lb Russell, 300 lb Rudy, 350 lb Old Weird Harold, and...900 lb Fat Albert.

During training tonight I got an adrenaline surge and flipped Albert...twice.  Here's a vid of the second flip.

Hell Day Shuttle Runs

Dave & I outside of our local gym lifting & running with heavy things.  Fun stuff.

It's all about intensity!

So, I've been having this conversation way too much lately for me to think it's just coincidence.  I'm getting asked more & more about how to effectively burn body fat and lean out (men) or firm/tone up (women).  The answer is the same for both...outside of maintaining a balanced diet, increase the intensity of your workouts.  Right now I'm seeing men in the gym futzing around the weightroom lifting less than optimal poundages (with sometimes horrible form) and women scared to touch weights and focusing endlessly on long duration cardio.  Both of these situations make building muscle and burning body fat a seemingly impossible task.

Webster's defines intensity as the magnitude of a quantity (as force or energy) per unit (as of area, charge, mass, or time).  From our perspective, intensity is the amount of force (weight training) or energy (cardio) expended per unit of time.  Thus, in order to increase the intensity of your weightlifting, one must either lift heavier weights during the same time period or lift the same weights in a shorter time period.  Similarly, for your cardiovascular work, increasing intensity means moving faster (i.e., the same distance in a shorter period of time) or make moving in the same period of time more difficult by adding resistance somehow (carrying weight, adding wind resistance, etc.).  This very simple concept evades most people.  Whether it's ignorance or laziness (or both), I'm not sure...all I know is that it's happening.

Ways to increase your intensity is just like everything else on The Program...it's simple, not easy.  First off, let me address weight training.  Everyone...men and women...should be weight training to get stronger.  Early on in your weight training, getting stronger means increasing the poundages you are capable of lifting by adding weight to your exercises each week of a training cycle.  As you progress (and get older), you will reach a point where getting stronger inevitably becomes maintaining a certain standard of strength.  For instance, one cannot add weight to their squat, deadlift, or press forever until they died.  If this happened, then we'd see 85 year olds setting world records in weightlifting and powerlifting, which we don't.  What we do see is 85 year olds able to maintain a 225 lb squat or a 315 lb deadlift.  Each year they are able to maintain a certain poundage in their lifts, they have in effect gotten stronger.  For you in your quest to get/stay fit, unless you are 85, dinking around the gym lifting the same weight year after year isn't having much effect on your body composition.  In order to build muscle mass and decrease body fat, you must increase your intensity by getting stronger.  If you don't know if you're above or below average strength-wise, here are some tables of strength standards for men and women...

http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/PressStandards.html

http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/BenchStandards.html

http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/SquatStandards.html

http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/DeadliftStandards.html

http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/CleanStandards.html

These cover the basic compound lifts.  I also include push-ups, chin-ups, and dips in my recommendations, and I'm not sure of any universal standards.  I usually use the following website for guidelines on the push-up - http://www.topendsports.com/testing/tests/home-pushup.htm.  Dips and chin-ups are typically done body weight until one can do 10 reps and then the intensity can be increased by either strapping weight to your body or adding reps.  Getting stronger in the basic lifts will lead to gains in muscle mass which will increase your basal metabolic rate. 

Regarding cardiovascular exercise, people are under the delusion that adding time to their long duration, low- to moderate-intensity cardio is the key to burning body fat.  If only this were true.  Spending longer than 20-30 minutes per day doing cardio without sufficient weight training and protein in your diet (i.e., if you aren't following a bodybuilding protocol), then all your cardio is resulting in you burning muscle (catabolysis), which in effect makes it more difficult for your body to burn fat.  Long duration cardio only has a place in the training programs of endurance athletes or people wishing to train for an endurance event (marathon, triathlon, etc.).  People looking to get generally fit should limit their cardio, but increase the intensity.  By working your way up from walking to jogging or jogging to sprinting during the same 30 minute time frame will not only increase the total calories burned during the cardio session, but your metabolism will be stoked for hours afterwards making the total calories you burn well into the next day higher.  You can also increase the intensity of your cardio by incorporating things like complexes, shuttle runs, suicides, weighted carries, or farmer's walks a couple of days per week after your weight training sessions.  This will have the same metabolic effect.

If you've hit a plateau in your fitness/fat loss efforts, try increasing the intensity of your workouts and see what happens.  I'd bet you break through your plateau assuming there aren't other things like an imbalanced diet hindering your efforts.

Convenience is killing us

I am Will Pack & I approve this message...
http://blog.gaiam.com/blog/convenience-is-killing-us/

Back from vacation...glad to be back on schedule

So, after a 6 day trip to New Orleans & Atlanta, I'm back home & I'm relieved.  6 days of haphazard eating has taken its toll on me and I'm ready to be back on an eating schedule.  I worked out today (I did snatches, front squats, & push presses in the Batcave) & got my food planned out for the week.  Here's my meal plan for the rest of the week:

6:30 a.m. - 3 scrambled eggs & oatmeal (1/2 cup rolled oats, 1 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp brown sugar)
9:30 a.m. - peanut butter & jelly sandwich
12:30 p.m. - cabbage & baked chicken breast tenderloin (thanks Kim!)
3:30 p.m. - 1 apple, 1 cup whole milk
6:00 p.m. - 1 banana, 1 cup whole milk
7:00 p.m. - large salad (romaine lettuce, cucumber, avocado), 1 cup whole milk

Total Calories: 2100
Protein: 110 g (21% of my calories)
Fat: 91 g (40% of my calories)
Carbs: 239 g (39% of my calories)
Fiber: 39 g
Sodium (Na): 1028 mg
Potassium (K): 3864 mg
K/Na Ratio: 3.7 - according to research published by the NIH (National Institutes of Health), the recommended dietary K/Na ratio should be well above 1, preferrably 5 or higher.  This week's plan was thrown together last minute, so I can (and will) do better.

For those interested in sodium, potassium, & their effects on blood pressure, check out this article:
http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/html/chapter8.htm.

Here are also a couple of pertinent vids I made while on vacation last week.

Travel food tips

The Movement continues...even while on travel...

The Movement Has Begun

Okay, so I've begun playing around with videos for the blog.  I haven't bought an HD camcorder yet, so until then my cell phone camera will have to do.

The Movement has begun!!

Project X & Patient Zero in the gym.

BEASTMODE SHUTTLE RUNS, BABY!!!

So it begins.  The Movement is on!  Wake up & get on board.  The program works...all you gotta do is own you.

More to come.

Useful online tools

The Program, at its heart, is for do-it-yourselfers.  There is no magic pill, formula, powder, food, exercise or anything that I've found to be the end-all-be-all quick-fix for getting fit & healthy.  The Program is founded on you taking the time necessary to get to truly know yourself...your strengths (expand upon them), your weaknesses (strengthen them), your doubts & fears (overcome them), your lack of knowledge in certain areas (fill the cups).  As more and more people get on board, I've recognized the need for good online resources so here are a few that I recommend.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ - Terrific all around calorie tracker.  Food tracking is fundamental to beginning the program.  Once you are really in-tune with your diet & how what you eat truly affects you, track everything that crosses your lips...it'll help you determine what you truly need to be consuming to support your fitness efforts.

http://www.exrx.net/ - I use this website all the time to see quick example avi movies of exercises.  Often people use machines at the gym (which I only really recommend if you're rehabbing an injury or something) due to lack of barbell & dumbbell knowledge.  The Program calls for resistance training...bodyweight, barbell or dumbbell primarily...and you can find examples of everything you need on this website.

http://www.linear-software.com/online.html - This is a great website that calculates your body fat percentage given specific inputs (body measurements).  If you have a pair of fat calipers and can use them on yourself, then terrific...fairly accurate way to measure body fat.  However, most folks don't have them nor do they have the ability to measure themselves with them so I recommend the tape measurement method.  The results are very close to what you'd get with accurate caliper measurements.  If your goals are non-specific like fitting your clothes better or getting a six-pack abs, then you may not care about your body fat percentage.  However, I use the measurement to make sure I'm staying in a healthy body fat range (I like to remain in the athletic range).

No excuses

This whole journey of mine was, and continues to be, a huge lesson in self-discipline...the ability to motivate oneself despite the circumstances.  Think about it...if the combination of your current diet, amount of exercise, and sleep has you overfat, obese, and/or with measureable health issues (high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, metabolic syndrome, etc.) chances are your conditions can be reversed with lifestyle changes.  Lifestyle changes are hard because they require self-discipline.  It takes hard work, determination, motivation, and downright stubbornness to embrace real change to habits that have sometimes taken years to develop.

As a society, we are becoming more technologically advanced and at the same time more sedentary.  In many circles of American society, exercise has become an extracurricular activity.  For those of us that don't work jobs that require a significant amount of physical labor, unless we exercise regularly, we develop bodies that none of us are proud of...poor posture, extremely limited range of motion, weak shrunken muscles, often times pockets of unwanted body fat, and myriad health issues.  The big box gym has become a symbol of getting fit in this country and the truth is going to one of these establishments is not for everybody.  If you have a membership at a big box gym and use the services, good for you...keep doing what you're doing.  Some folk can't or won't go to a gym.  That's still no excuse to not exercise.  If exercise is a priority in your day (which it should be) you can do many non-gym things...getting outside and moving around jogging, walking, riding a bike, playing ball are always available (weather permitting); and if you are stuck or wish to be indoors, calisthenics are a wonderful way to get into and stay in shape. Push ups, pull ups, dips, sit ups, crunches, leg raises, V-ups, squats, lunges, jumping jacks, reverse push ups, and bridges can all be performed with minimal equipment and right at your bedside.  I regularly do calisthenics either when I'm on travel or when I need a break from lifting weights.  Typically I do something like 10 squats + 50 jumping jacks + 15 push ups + 35 crunches for 3 rounds with little to no rest.  Takes less than 10 minutes and I usually end up winded and with a mild sweat going.

Establishing an exercise regimen is the cornerstone of The Program, and it's imperative that you do so in order to see the results you want.  Although diet is often times the harder component to control (at least mentally), your diet is there to support your activity level.  I've gone to an extreme and built my own home gym in my garage so I can execute my exercise program any day of the week, any week of the year period.  I'm that committed to exercise being a part of my lifestyle...

I don't expect everyone to do this (although I advise anyone to), but a serious committment to an exercise program is key to controlling your body fat levels.