The Vlog

There is an important disctinction between high intensity cardio vs low-intensity cardio. The former serves to increase cardiovascular efficiency by increasing the size of the heart while the later stretches it. This is important because by stretching the heart instead of just increasing the size, you allow more oxygenated blood to get to your muscles. If you feel out of shape doing your workouts and like you can’t recover in-between sets, you should consider doing low-intensity cardio. Low-intensity cardio will improve the oxygen delivery into your muscles in-between sets and will make your workouts much more manageable. I recommend 60 minutes 1-2 times a week to begin with of either jogging, active warm-ups, or some activity where you can keep your heart rate consistently elevated (but not too high).

Von

I get the same annoying e-mails every week. These e-mails basically say “Hey, you’re still fat and you haven’t reached your goals, here’s what you can do.” Well I reach my goals so screw those e-mails. A few weeks ago, I received one of those e-mails above which stated the importance of goal setting and planning. It caught my attention because it stated that if you don’t write down your goals and the plan to get there, you’ll get nowhere. I find this to be true, but scary at the same time. Since I have the education and experience to write exercise and nutrition programs, I get excited to create a new program for myself and for my clients. However, if you’re flying solo, it can be terrifying because you don’t know if it will really work. I’m inspired by people who take this chance, but don’t have a degree in exercise physiology or nutrition. I believe a lot of these people will fail at first, but the key is to not give up. Try a different plan, work with a trainer, research, or a get a training partner. The point is that eventually, success will happen, but it does take an open mind, setting your goals, and persevering.

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You don’t need to be very strong to build big muscles. What you really need is lots of food and sufficient training volume. Notice that I didn’t mention intensity. You don’t really need to lift heavy weights to get big, but you must lift at least moderate loads a lot of times. This is what’s called non-functional hypertrophy. When you see really big guys on TV, MMA fights, and even some bodybuilding competitions, many of them will not possess large amounts of strength. In fact, many smaller olympic weightlifting or powerlifting competitors will be much stronger.

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I like the idea of diet soda. It has a lot less calories than regular pop, it can help you eat less since it makes you feel more full, and it can satisfy sugar cravings. I used to wonder however if the acidity of diet pop was higher compared to normal pop. I found out today through a University of Minnesota study that regular coke is the most acidic pop beating out any diet pop. Despite it being not as acidic as regular coke, it is still very acidic. Remember, if you have any kind of visible tooth decay (which makes the attraction factor plummet), you’ll make it worse by drinking pop.

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Although it’s rarely espoused by strength coaches, one of the surest and fastest ways to get strong at an exercise is to practice it very frequently. Remember that there are essentially two ways to get strong. One is through the muscular system which means getting bigger muscles. The other way to get strong is through the nervous system which means practicing an exercise over and over again. I can tell you without hesitation that the nervous system can be utilized exclusively for huge increases in strength and in relatively short amount of time. If one chooses to practice frequently, how often should one work on an exercise? Everyday or at least every other day. You should also vary the intensity from relatively easy to somewhat difficult. In my experience, going to muscular failure will take longer to recover from throughout the day than doing less difficult lifting. Why do you think that guys going into the army can do like 20 push-ups in the beginning and 100 push-ups at the end of a couple of months? They practice push-ups everyday.

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How frequent should one eat for optimal health? You’ve probably heard that small frequent meals are the way to go. The truth is that no one really knows. There is research which appears to support intermittent fasting and which also supports small frequent meals. But don’t miss the forest from the trees. The most significant factors which matter the most are the quality of the food you consume and how much. Don’t expect that by eating one fifteen hundred calorie meal consisting of doritos and sprite that it’s going to have the same weight loss effect as eating fiteen hundred calories wroth of vegetables, fruit, and lean proteins. It won’t. However, by focusing on your efforts on eating high quality foods and eating at least three times a day will provide awesome results. Remember, make your nutrition something you can be successful with!

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Have you ever threw your back out tying your shoe? These kind of injuries don’t happen by chance. If one sits down for eight plus hours a day and performs repetitive tasks, it can be very hard on the body. The two main injuries which desk jockies sustain are back pain and shoulder impingement. Back pain results from sitting too much. The loads from gravity and your body while in a sitting position are very high. Shoulder impingement happens because the back is hunched over and the arms are used in front of the body for tasks such as answering the phone, writing, and typing. What can one do? At work, get and walk around every 15 minutes. Stretch here and there and sit up too. For exercise, do a lot of rows and back endurance work. With these simple strategies, the most common injuries can be avoided.

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I still get potential clients who talk about “sucking it in.” No, this isn’t to hide the gut, it’s to create spinal stability which many exercise practioners still practice. Is it effective? Unless you have back issues now (and depending on what they are), it will be nowhere near as effective as “bracing.” Bracing is a term used to simply describe contraction of all of your ab muscles. Practically speaking, you can make sure you are braced by completely relaxing. Then tense up your ab muscles and feel your “front” abs (rectus abdominis) and your “side” abs (obliques). If they’re harder, then you are braced. This will actually protect your spine from stress, herniations, avulsions, and other dehabilitating injuries with any exercise that you do. Also practice keeping your back straight when you do exercises and this also creates the highest stability for your back.

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NEPA is cool. What is it? Non-exercise physical activity. Why is it cool? Besides burning a good amount of calories, you can help your friends move, carry lots of groceries for that old lady down the hall, shovel the snow, sprint to your car so you get to work on time:), and become more fit. We don’t farm anymore, hunt every other day, bring water to camp, or have to relocate to find better food sources. This is why you should never complain if you have to anything heavy lifting or a lot of walking. Trust me, it’s a good thing. Who could use more NEPA? Besides most North Americans, couch potatos could use more NEPA to get them off the couch. Just by doing the activities I talked about above and eating sensibly, you could stand to lose a lot of weight. And the things I mentioned above would become easier and easier if you happened to be overweight.

If you only have twenty minutes in the gym, there is one thing to do – resistance training. Forget cardio or classes, just do your resistance training. Resistance training will help you burn more fat, induce EPOC (boost in metabolism after workout), and increase strength. In fact, if you only have 30 minutes three times a week, resistance training is the best training for you. Just make sure your training is balanced so that if you do a push like a bench press, do a pull like a seated row. Also, if you do a back exercise like back extensions, do a core exercise like single-leg extended sit-ups.

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