The Community That is Always There For You

For every major undertaking in life it is important to have a support system.  Some people can accomplish things all by themselves but the odds of success rise dramatically when you have friends there to help you along. If you need evidence of this try to think of some of the great accomplishments in human history.  There might have been one leader but there was always a team of people behind that leader supporting them in a tactile or moral way. Taking it down a level there is plenty of literature on why you should get a gym buddy.  This has been highlighted by the growing popularity of Obstacle Course Races (OCR) that require team assistance.  I recently just completed a Tough Mudder and I can comfortably say that I would not have been able to accomplish a number of obstacles without help from teammates and strangers alike.

But for many of us, there are a number of responsibilities that come before your next workout.  Work, school, parenthood, and more are things that demand your attention when you know that the gym will still be waiting for you when your done.  This is exactly what happened to me.  I just completed my masters degree, I am a new father, my employer has given me additional responsibilities, and I just completed major renovations on my home.  But just like the gym there were people who were just as excited to have me back in fitness.  They happen to be people that I have never met.  That's right I am talking about Fitocracy again.  I had to start slow but they don't judge.  The same people who are benching more than their body weight are giving me props for taking a 15 minute walk.  That has been one of the biggest things that has helped me jump back in with both feet.  I've been out of the game for longer than I would like to admit and they know it but they don't care.  They are just happy I'm back. FYI none of the people that are congratulating me work for Fitocracy and if I haven't mentioned it before I don't work for them either.  I am officially back to working out and making fitness a priority again.  I'm hoping that I will be back here soon as well.  If you want to here from me on a more regular basis feel free to follow me on Tumblr or (you guessed it) join me on Fitocracy.  See you there.  We'll be waiting no matter when you decide to join us

He's going to pump..... You up!

My favorite fitness social media site, Fitocracy.com has teamed up with biggest fitness icon of all time, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Together they have created something called the 1% Challenge.  Together they have created 5 workout routines (so far) that take about 15 minutes each.  There are strength and cardio as well as equipment and body weight routines. Where does the 1% come in?  15 minutes is roughly only 1% of your 24 hr day.

I've talked about Fitocracy before but adding in these routines takes it up a notch.  Your not just blindly trying out exercises to see what works, though that's not always a bad way to begin.  All of these routines have video tutorials which is great for beginners who aren't sure of correct form.  In preparation for writing this post I watched a couple and I would even recommend them to people who know the exercises.  There are some good tips on how to keep your form all the way through the routine.

My favorite Routine is B or the Body Weight Circuit.  These means you can do all the exercises without buying any equipment going to the gym or even being at home.  If you live out of a suitcase you still don't have an excuse for not doing these.  Once again this is a great routine for beginners because it's much harder to injure yourself with no heavy objects around.  If this gets too easy you can always up your repetitions or jump over to the intermediate body weight routine D.

To ease myself back into working out and make sure I don't injure myself like I did last time this is how I'm starting off.  Personally I have added in some crunches and side planks but as with any exercise routine only do what feels comfortable to you.

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First Injury: Keep your head up

So I have now had my first fitness related injury.  It's one of those things that you really shouldn't be proud of but I am anyway.

 I was hoping to avoid that for a little bit long but I suppose it's good to get it out of the way.  Still not 100% sure what I did to cause it but the chiropractor is fairly certain it was because of bad form.  Now I admit I am not 100% on when I'm lifting heavy but I try very hard to keep as close as possible for as long as possible.  However when all you want to get are those 2 last reps in, your focus becomes keeping that weight from falling on your head instead of keeping perfect form.

Sorry to those "do or die" types but if I'm hurting I'll say so.  This hurt like hell and kept me out of the gym for a while because every time it would feel a little better I would push through the pain and aggravate it again.  I say it was a neck injury but I had pain radiating from the spine and all over my right shoulder and upper back.  Apparently this is a common enough injury that when I finally went to my chiropractor, he recognized it pretty quick.  All I had to mention was that I have been lifting heavier recently to get that "ahhhhh" reaction.

The human body is able to withstand tremendous amounts of weight. Even without developing your muscle with the intention of lifting, the back and more importantly the spine are designed for it. Studies have even shown that the curves in our spine allow us to support 10 times more weight than if it was straight.  That being said, we have a tendency to try and get our back under the weight.  Even in the movies you will see someone trying to push upward while bending their head forward with the strain.  However doing this straightens the natural curve in the neck and subjects your neck to undue stress. The point being the when you are doing heavy lifts, especially shoulder press of any kind, be sure to keep your head up.  Sitting here typing this posing like L, probably isn't helping any.

(Warning next part isn't so fitness related just an observation)
The solution?  A couple trips to the chiropractor will straighten it out if they don't scare you to death first.  They try this in multiple ways first the try and electrocute you with those contacts they put on your back.  And if you like me you try and handle as much voltage (or whatever) as you can cause we are manly men and we can take it.  But then they leave you alone in the room and you feel your muscles start to contract in ways they never have before and by the time they come back you've either become a contortionist or your dead.  Next they act like pedophiles.  You have to take your shirt off so they can rub oil on you (if they don't really need to do this someone let me know cause mine did) and rub your back down with the excuse that "you need to be loose".  Then they lay your cheek on their hand and tell you to relax.  This is the time when they have given up on you and decide your a threat and try to SNAP your neck clean off.  Just like this. Some how after a couple of times doing this you feel better and get to go back to working out like an idiot or learn so you never have to see that horrible man again!

As always I hope I was helpful.  If you like these posts or if you would like me to cover a topic feel free to leave a comment and let me know.  If you really think they are worth someone's time share them around.  I hope to have some of these topics recorded on my YouTube channel as well so come check me out there if you have not already.

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Ab Myth - it's not muscle it's fat!

I have heard some of the craziest things in the world regarding abs.  One of them being he's not strong he's fat. Granted this is the exception rather than the rule.  Many people think that you can target belly fat by doing tons of ab workouts.  That is only going to work if you already have an extremely low body fat to begin with.  You will build your abdominal muscles and there are some fantastic benefits to that, but there won't be anything visible. This is why many of the Strength competition guys look like they have extra belly.  It's really just a small layer of fat over the muscle.  Also for people that are trying to gain a lot of muscle, also called 'hard gainers', consuming enough food to grow muscle without gaining a little fat is extremely difficult if not impossible.  Did you know the guys and girls you see in bodybuilding competitions are normally weaker during competition than the rest of the year?  That's because they eat more to pack on the muscle and then eat less and do more carido to have the lowest body fat possible to compete.

 

Let's break this down a little though.  For those of us not entering a strong man or body building competition any time soon, the logic is much simpler.  If you have enough willpower to keep working those abs to the point where you can see that area getting bigger, you are still working out more than the average American. More muscle also means you burn more calories so if you have not been increasing your calorie intake you should be loosing weight. The best way would be to work on all muscle groups evenly.  Even if you could get just your abs and nothing else, would you really want to be as over balanced as this guy? 

 

My personal experience with this was in high school.  I wasn't athletic and didn't participate in sports but I did get into kickboxing.  It was mainly cardio but we did plenty of crunches, planks, and pushups as well.  However not giving a damn about being healthy (as teenagers normally don't) I finished every workout session off with a Mountain Dew and anything that I was burning I was eating more to compensate.  Not on purpose, just because I was hungry more often. Point is my abs were getting bigger but my body fat percentage wasn't going down any.  My aunt noticed that I was filling out and told me I needed to slim down.  I explained my situation and she laughed at me.  She told me that I was silly and working out tighted up the fat.  You are allowed to laugh all I could do was sit and stare at her dumbfounded. Point is that you can get bad information from anyone even if they mean well.

Granted you are talking to someone who sill doesn't have defined abs so feel free to believe what you will. However if you want the lowdown from a professional here is my favorite article on the subject.



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Pictures by sumoman.co  CC-BY

Bulldozer training and yoga?

So I started a new training routine this week.  I found the listing on MuscleandStrength.com which if I haven't mentioned before is one of my favorite sites for finding workouts, exercise explanations and videos and other such fitness related material.  This plan in particular is called Bulldozer Training and it is based on the rest-pause method of training. This method suggests that the rests between reps be minimal and that the goal should not be a weight or a number of repetitions per set but the number of repetitions overall.  For example you do as many repetitions in 4 sets as you can if you meet the goal number of repetitions you raise the weight NEXT WEEK.  While I tweaked the weight a little bit this first go round the next time I know what I can and can not do.  I like this method because it makes sure I get the most out of my time at the gym.  Even still I ended up talking to someone in the middle of a routine and it threw me all off.  It and I are works in progress.

One thing I wasn't crazy about on this workout was the compound movement exercises have a different set up.  For exercises like squats and dead lifts that use a number of different muscles, you do a many sets of 1 as you can in 10 minutes with the goal of doing 15.  This means you should be getting less than 15.  I thought this was crazy talk that I would never get anything out of waiting that long in between sets.  It's the exact opposite of the rest of the training.  Be that as it may I did this for squats on Thursday and I'm just now able to walk normal again.  But damn if my legs aren't a little bigger already.

That leads me into the next part.  I have been considering trying yoga for a while now but never seem to get started.  A big inspiration for this was a YouTube video about a disabled war vet that was told he would never walk again.  The most interesting part about this was that even though the instructor that agreed to work with him is called out in the video it looks like the majority of the training done was at home in from of the TV.  If this guy can get there anyone can.  That said I did a little research on another video and realized that a lot of these yoga moves and poses are really just stretches that I had been doing for a while now. It doesn't hurt that all these yoga videos are good looking women in tight fitting cloths that can bend in ways that.....(ahem).  Back on topic, since I could barely walk I decided it might now be a bad idea to try this out.  So I've been doing a 5 or 10 minute set of stretches and yoga poses and I think it's helped.  I'm going to be borrowing a couple started DVDs from a friend and see how far I want to go with this.  There are actually ways to do do strength training with yoga and get flexibility, stability, and muscle control out of it as well.  I'll be looking forward to that training.

For those who were looking for more food information I am trying to "eat clean" as much as possible.  Trying to stay away from the obviously chemical based foods like soda and cool whip and anything that doesn't contain a single work on the label that you can pronounce. My biggest shocker was that after I did that meal breakdown I've been trying to do out a meal plan that will allow me to meet it but I keep coming up short.  It is getting me to look at nutrition labels for more than just the calories which is a step in the right direction.  If you remember if I'm doing the 6 meals a day 1 meal is only supposed to contain 9 grams of fat. I found out today that 1 normal hotdog HAS 11!!  I've still got a refrigerator full of those and I hate throwing food away.

I still have some thoughts on dandelion tea and flavors of clean eating but once again it is way to late so it's time to head to bed.  If you enjoy these, if they are helping, or if you just like the links and laughing at the kid running in circles trying to get healthy please let me know.  While I think this is helping me keep with it, it's always nice to know someone is benefiting.

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Meal Plans?

An article on one of my favorite sites explains how you should be breaking down your diet on a good workout plan.  So I thought I would give it a shot and at least compare what I am doing to what I should be doing. Here is the link if you want to try it out for yourselves.

http://www.muscleandstrength.com/articles/how-to-create-a-bodybuilding-diet.html
So here’s how it works. Use the calculator here to determine how many calories you should be taking in per day. This is a common calculation and worked out the same for the My Fitness Pal mobile app.  Next you break down the calories into 30% protein, 50% carbs, and 20% protein.  (Yea I was never a big fan of Atkins either) turn the calories into grams (use the site) and then divide each one by the number of meals per day.

For me that was 2500 cals per day
Protein 750 = 187.5g
Carbs 1250 = 312.5g
Fat 500 = 56g

At 6 meals per day (which is about what you should be doing to keep your metab up and gain more nutrients from what your eating) My Per meal is

P 31.5
C 52
F 9.3

What I like best about the article is whether you buy into the numbers or not there is a nice long list on the best places to get your healthy Proteins, Carbs, and fats.

Based on this it looks like I’m getting what I need from the right areas but I’m over doing it it the fat section and not getting quite enough in the protein area.  Considering the new workout routine I’m trying this might be an issue.  Another interesting fact is that fat slows down the digestion process so the meal/snack/supplement you have after a workout should contain as little fat as possible.  Point being that while you might feel nice and manly after pumping serious iron at the gym your not helping yourself by having a big steak.  My issue is that I mix my protein with skim milk that has less fat in it but it’s still there.
I also did some research on body fat percentage and was told that once a week was not to often even though my gym says once a month. hmmmm  Wonder they are just tired of seeing me shirtless?  Oh well.  I also found that the caliper system isn’t the most reliable and changes dramatically when you change who is performing the test.  My last test said 14% and the one before that 17% only a month before but with a different person.  I didn’t even bother tracking it.  At least if you stay with the same person you know what direction your going in.  So my new and more precise goal (for now is to gain weight while lowering body fat percentage or at least keeping it the same.  Once I bulk a little I can break out the Insanity videos again and slim down in a hurry.  At least it worked that way last time.

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