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by Dr. Kareem Samhouri – CSCS, HFS

If you want to lose stubborn abdominal fat faster, don’t make these 3 common fat loss mistakes below…

1. Relying on Abs-Specific Training:

For some reason, the misconception of spot reduction continues.  No argument has ever convinced me that you can lose fat in a specific area by contracting the muscle in that specific area.  Fat loss just does not work this way.  Yet for some reason, we see hundreds of people every day at the gym doing hundreds of crunches and situps and thinking that they are somehow burning fat from their abdomen, when in reality, they’re just wasting time!

Fat loss is a systemic effect that takes place as your body morphs into a healthier you.  Fat storage patterns vary person to person according to hormonal levels, genetic fat storage patterns, myofascial restrictions, and inflammation.  Reducing body fat in those areas through exercise is only done if you are working to modify hormonal levels that have related fat storage areas, for example.

However, there has yet to be convincing evidence that you can do tricep presses, for example, and lose fat in the back of your arms… Just doesn’t work that way.  The same is true with your abs.  In this case, even if you do 3000 sit ups per day, you wouldn’t be doing much for fat loss.  Fat loss is about:

1. Energy system training
2. Compound movements targeting many joints at once
3. Muscle balancing
4. Motor unit recruitment, and
5. Multi-planar movement

It’s impossible to add all of the above into an abs exercise, or even a series of abs exercises.  The goal is to tire as much of your body as possible, to a safe extreme.  This is referred to as momentary muscular failure, and it’s when lactic acid onset takes place.  Remember, lactic acid, which is what makes you sore, is a very good thing.  It means your body is working hard to reduce inflammation and repair.  You’re well on your way to rapid fat loss.  You’ll see incredible results when you accept this:

I believe muscle soreness following a fat loss workout should be a 5 – 7 (on a 0 to 10 scale), most of the time, where:

0 = no pain whatsoever, no muscle soreness
10 = extreme muscle soreness, emergency level

This is a big wake-up call for a lot of people, but it may just shed light on why you’re not seeing the fat loss results for which you were hoping.
2. Low To Moderate Intensity Cardio For Long Duration:

Walking.  This, alone, simply won’t work for long-term fat loss results. It may work at first for somebody who is extremely obese and has been sedentary, but not for most people.  While I strongly believe in the benefits of walking for stress relief, personal time, reflection with movement, blood pressure and cholesterol modification, etc., I do not consider it a good method to lose body fat.

Losing fat is about shocking your body and stimulating a repair process.  Giving your body the chance to adapt to a demand over time doesn’t help you lose fat quickly.  Sure, you can see some initial results, often masked as ‘toning’, but in the end you’re turning your Type IIa muscle fibers (oxidative-glycolytic, or medium speed fibers) to Type I (oxidative, or slow muscle fibers that have great endurance).  The only trouble is that the Type II muscle fibers do a much better job of getting you lean.

By stimulating muscular strength (not necessarily “bulking”) you are enhancing your metabolism.  It takes energy to build and restore lean muscle tissue.  Allowing it to grow consumes a bit more energy, but you don’t have to bulk up to see great results.  Rather, just create a muscle repair process while stimulating your metabolism with fat-burning foods and you’ll see your results go wild.

After a full-body resistance-based alternation-style workout session, you’ll spike your metabolism for 2-3 days as your body re-uptakes the lactic acid from your bloodstream, restores oxygen to the muscle tissue you’ve worked, and repairs the micro-tears that took place in your muscles.  Supersets or circuits in full body workouts is one example of this, and interval training accomplishes this too, but what if we take things a step further and get you off a machine?

I suggest that we alternate body parts, directions, speeds, intensities, and muscle synergies, or pairs.  Alternation in any form, even when the intensity is a bit lower, is still a rapid fat loss signal to your body.  You’re sure to see wild fat-burning results once you start thinking about fat loss as “shocking the fat away”.
3. Caloric Restriction:

Caloric restriction = muscle starvation = fat loss grinds to a halt.

Muscle requires calories to grow.  Without some degree of muscle growth, it will atrophy under duress.  If you’re exercising intensely, which you should be, your muscle will be eating itself to survive.

It’s really important that you feed your system so it can grow and maintain its level of function.  Your body requires food for muscle repair, concentration, heart health, and digestive health.  Regular meals are best.  There are 2 schools of thought with eating for fat loss:

1. Eat 3 meals per day and up to 2 snacks.
2. Eat 5-6 small meals per day.

Normally, I recommend #2, because I find this is a great way to ensure you are not snacking on things that are bad for you, because you are eating healthy small meals often enough.  Also, I tend to never feel hungry when I’m eating on this schedule.  That’s very helpful for fat loss.

Contrarily, eating 3 meals per day seems like it should also allow you ample time to digest and re-spike your metabolism.  I believe there should be a small bout of exercise in between each meal if you choose this approach.  If thats the goal, let’s go at it.

Again, my recommendation is 5-6 meals/day, where you pre-plan your week’s meals over the weekend, cook many meals at once, and prepare yourself for fat loss.  The most helpful resource I’ve read to date, on this, is Fat Burning Kitchen.  I recommend you read this also.

Most importantly, make sure you are getting enough calories.  Yes, you do need a caloric deficit to lose fat over a certain time period, but taking your daily calories too low can reduce your metabolism and halt your fat loss.

Under no circumstance should an active female eat less than 1300 calories or an active male eat less than 1500 calories when trying to lose weight.  Within a few months of coaching, most of my female clients are eating 1800 – 2000 calories, and my male clients are eating 2100 – 2800 calories.  …and they keep losing fat faster and faster.  The goal should be to stimulate your metabolism to be able to eat more, not less.

In summary, there are 3 major fat loss mistakes you absolutely want to avoid:

1. Low to moderate intensity cardio for long duration – great way for your body to adapt to exercise and stop burning fat.  Plus, you’re converting your muscle fibers to the wrong type.

2. Abs-specific training – 3000 sit ups and no result?  That’s just depressing.  Train for full body systemic fat loss.  You’ll be glad you did.

3. Caloric restriction = starving muscle = no more fat loss; instead, make the goal to eat more and build more fat-burning muscle to ramp up your metabolism, permanently.

I specialize in helping people just like you burn fat at absolutely ridiculous rates.  I’ve focused on this for 12 years now, and I’ve even added advanced physical therapy techniques that exploit how your nervous system works to get you results faster than anything you’ve ever seen.  I’d like to teach you all about this awesome method that has people losing fat at record speed with these 2 special gifts below:

by Jason Ferruggia

Today I have a recent interview I did about how to build muscle and gain weight. Check it out and let me know if you have any questions.

Question: Someone walks into your gym with a fairly modest lifting past (a recreational lifter or a little above) and says “I want to start getting bigger, what are three things I should know or do?” You say…

To build muscle and gain weight you have to use big, compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, military presses, dips, chin ups, pushups and rows.

You have to train with adequate resistance, meaning 5-10 reps on average and you need to strive to get stronger and do more work over time. Progressive overload is a key component in making size and strength gains.

No matter how good your workout is you will never gain any appreciable size without adequate nutrition. Shoot for about one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day and 1-3 grams of carbs depending on your bodyfat levels, training age, chronological age and the type of workouts you are doing. The leaner you are the better your insulin sensitivity and thus the more carbs you can eat. This is especially true if you are a teenager with a racing metabolism. A 17 year old kid with single digit bodyfat might need three grams of carbs per pound in order to gain weight, whereas a 35 year old might only need 1-1.25 grams. Anymore than that and he’ll end up fat. For the older guy, carb cycling is going to be a smarter approach.

The take home point is you gotta eat for size gains.

Question: What about rookie mistakes. Which are the biggest ones to avoid? In other words, DON’T do this stuff!

If you’re a newbie to training don’t 12-16 top end, work sets per training session. You definitely don’t need more than that. As you get more advanced you will be able to tolerate more work but newbies and stereotypical hardgainers should keep their total volume low until they develop a solid strength base.

Don’t train more than 3-4 days per week.

Don’t let your training sessions (minus warm up and cool down time) last more than 45 minutes.

Don’t waste your time with machines and isolation movements.

Don’t train for the pump.

Don’t use body part splits.

Don’t train to failure.

Question: What about injury prevention. What are the risks involved with lifting more and heavier weights?

Any physical activity worth pursuing is always going to have some injury risk involved. The risks of heavy lifting include rotator cuff damage, torn pecs, knee damage, muscle strains, disc herniation, etc. The key is to try and minimize the risk as much as possible. The best ways to do that are the following:

• Always warm up properly by jumping rope or doing some type of callisthenic drills for 5-10 minutes before training. Follow this up with some mobility work and some joint prep stuff as well. This is also known as the dynamic warm up.
• Don’t just jump right into your heaviest sets but rather work up them gradually by doing 3-5 warm up sets with 40-90% of your starting weight. For example, if you were going to squat 275 you would want to first do the bar for ten reps, then 95 x 5, 135 x 5, 185 x 3, 225 x 3 and maybe even 250 x 1.
• Always do prehab work for the shoulders, as they are very injury prone. This could include YTWL’s and shoulder dislocations with a broomstick before each upper body session and some work on unstable exercises such as ring dips or Jungle Gym pushups.
• Always do at least 5-10 minutes of mobility work for the hips and other tight areas of the lower body before squatting or deadlifting.  Static stretching may also be warranted here as well if the lifter is having a difficult time reaching the full squat position.
• Never train to failure. When you do that and allow your form to break down the injury risk goes up. Anything less than picture perfect technique may lead to injury.

Question: Let’s say a guy wants to know how to build muscle and gain weight but has very limited time. Is it possible to do this? Can you get bigger with just 30 – 45 minutes a day in the gym three days a week?

Absolutely, I’d say that at least 60% of my clients over the last 17 years have all trained no more than three days per week for 45 minutes and have achieved outstanding results. Your testosterone levels peak at around thirty minutes into your workout and are back to baseline at around the 45 minute mark, so keeping your workouts short is actually a great way to make even faster progress. Provided you’re in shape and have decent work capacity you can get a lot done in three 45 minute workouts per week.

Question: What are your favorite three exercises that can help people put on size and why?

Squat- Because there is no better exercise to develop the lower body. They involve every muscle group from your sternum down and will build big quads, hamstrings and glutes along with strengthening your abs and spinal erectors.

Deadlift- There is no more basic movement then bending down and picking something up off the floor. Thus, there is no more functional exercise than the deadlift. For trap, upper, mid and lower back size there is nothing that beats the deadlift. It also develops the grip and abs as well.

Tie: Standing Press & Pushup- After you have the lower body and a big pulling exercise covered you need a pressing movement to round the whole thing out. This is a tougher decision because there are several good ones. I think, for me, it would be a tie between a standing press and a pushup.

The pushup is the most highly under rated exercise in existence and believe it or not, most people can’t do it properly. When done correctly the pushup is a full body exercise and develops functional strength as well as anything you could possibly do. Of course, basic pushups are too easy for most people with more than a couple months of training experience so an advanced version like a suspended pushup with chains could be used.

Along with the pushup I like a standing press. This can be done with barbells or dumbbells. Unlike the bench press the standing press, obviously, has you on your feet, and therefore instantly becomes more “functional.” It involves more muscle groups, strengthens the core and puts less stress on the shoulders than the bench press does. This is a great exercise for developing the delts and triceps while giving some pretty decent stimulation to the traps as well.