Training

Written by: Shin Ohtake, Fitness & Fat-Loss Expert
Author of MAX Workouts, The Ultimate Lean Body Fitness Program

Every morning, shortly after we get up we take our dog out for an hour walk.  It’s our daily morning ritual.  Fortunately weather in southern California allows us to participate in this joyful activity and we take full advantage of it.

Luckily we live close to the beach, so we take our walks along the beach and every morning we see all sorts of people partaking in fun activities like rollerblading, bike riding, walking.  But by far the most common activity we see is running…although I’m not sure if I’d consider running as a “fun” activity for me personally…I know many people love to run.

I think it’s partly the endorphin rush you get when you run, not to mention it’s also the easiest form of exercise.  It’s something anyone can do…but easy isn’t always the best.  The biggest problem I see with people running is that majority of them aren’t physically strong enough to run properly.

If you slowed down the motion and saw the biomechanics of running, you would quickly see that running is a plyometric exercise.  When you run, you actually put all of your weight on one foot and then push off with enough force to lift your entire body off the ground, while you switch legs and land on your other foot.  Running forces you to bear all of your weight on one foot at a time and then it’s repeated thousands of times or more depending on how far you run.

That’s a lot of force being applied to the joints on your legs.  It’s no wonder so many people that run suffer from foot, ankle, knees and hip injuries.  Their joints aren’t capable of handling that kind of forceful repetitive stress.

When you think about it, running requires a lot of muscle, tendon and ligament support.  So really, it should only be performed by people that are in good shape and strong enough to handle the repetitive force running places on your body.

Unfortunately most of the people I see running are nowhere near in the kind of shape they should be in.  It’s completely backwards…the people I see most often running are exactly the kind of people that shouldn’t be running.  It’s painful to see so many of these people that’s trying to get into shape by “literally” pounding their poor joints into the ground.

The truth is when you begin running you will burn more calories, hence you will lose weight.  However, what you’re not realizing is that you’re setting yourself up for eventual halt in progression.

Why?

Because your body has an innate ability to adapt and make things more proficient, so your body doesn’t have to expend as much energy.  What this means is that as you get better at running, your body ends up burning less calories when you run!  A double edge sword…right?  You want to get fit and be able to run better, but you also want to keep burning calories so you can lose weight.  So if your body keeps getting more efficient at conserving energy when you run, you have to either increase the distance you run OR increase the pace of your runs.

And for most part, people tend to increase the distance, because it’s easier to do.  Increasing your pace for a long distance run is difficult, challenging and it’s too hard to keep the pace up without stopping or resting, so if your running continuously your pace automatically slows down to a pace that you can keep running for long periods of time.  And this usually ends up in one of the two scenarios:

1. The first scenario is – you end up running the same distances at the same steady pace,  day in and day out and your weight loss progress complete comes to a halt.

1. The second scenario is – that you get injured.  Your body and joints can only handle the constant pounding and the repetitive stress eventually causes inflammation on one or more of your joints..

Either way, neither scenario is good.

Not to mention that running long distances causes you to lose lean muscle mass, which is your body’s most effective calorie burner.  Less lean muscle mass means less calories burned as well as decreased strength, which makes you more susceptible to injuries.  It’s a vicious cycle.

So what’s a runner to do?  STOP RUNNING.

There are far better and more effective ways to get into shape then just hitting the pavement and going for a long run.  Running has it’s place in a fitness regimen, but only after you’ve gotten strong enough to be able to sustain the kind of force running generates.  Even then, I think long runs should only be done sparingly…unless you’re training for an endurance event that requires you to do so.

I’d stick to doing short bursts of sprints or fast paced running followed by rest and recovery.  This way you’re only putting pressure on your joints for a short period of time followed by rest so your muscles, tendons and ligaments can recover…hopefully enough for you to be able to sustain the force for multiple rounds of short runs.  You can repeat this process as many times as you want (or as many as your body lets you)…although I see no need to do anymore than 20 – 30 minutes worth.

I would also recommend running on grass, sand or any surface that has some give instead of concrete…to reduce the amount of stress put on your joints.

Even then, these short bursts of running may still be too strenuous for some of you that are just starting out and need more time to develop proper conditioning and strength before tackling the runs.  Which is why it’s vital that you include strength training as part of your regular fitness regimen.

Now, I’m not talking about ineffective isolated exercises…sorry to disappoint, but if you’ve been hittin’ the weights doing bicep curls or tricep kick backs, it’s just not going to cut it. You need to be doing full body exercises that build functional strength.  Functional strength enables you to carry the benefits over to activities like running, hiking, climbing as well as essential primal movements such as lifting, carrying, jumping, pulling and pushing…all activities/movements that your body performs on a daily basis.

And let’s not forget that performing full body functional exercisesalso builds lean muscle mass which increases your ability to burn more calories…especially from fat…hence getting you leaner and fitter, much more effectively than “just” running.

When it comes to women fitness, there is a unique way exercise to ensure you meet the needs of a woman’s body. Here are my 5 tips that I make sure I incorporate into my clients training routine and I encourage you to do the same.

1. Flexibility
2. Free-weights
3. Functional Movements
4. Fast-paced Exercises
5. Friggin Hard work

Flexibility

Simply put, flexibility exercise stretches and elongates muscles. These help to stretch muscles, protect against injury and allows the maximum range of motion for joints.

Benefits:

• improves the efficiency of daily activities
• improves the movement of muscles
• improves concentration of the mind
• improves blood circulation within the body
• aids in speedy recovery from injuries or accidents
• reduces tension of the muscles

You are NEVER too old to improve flexibility.

Stretching releases the lactic acid that builds in muscle with use and causes stiffness, tension, pain, and fatigue. In addition being flexible may also increase lubrication in the joints, creating ease and fluidity throughout your body.

Free-Weights

There are numerous benefits to resistance training and is a women fitness secret that is now beginning to be understood. Resistance training increases cardiovascular strength, reduces incidence of injuries, improves posture, improves strength, improves body composition, prevents osteoporosis and reduces loss of muscle mass due to inactivity.

By lifting weight, you’ll preserve muscle mass as you age. We naturally lose muscle over time, unless we lift weights.

Functional Movements

Functional training focuses on building a body capable of doing everyday activities in positions your body uses in everyday life. Exercises that requires the use of the greatest number of muscles and joints, such as lunges or standing dumbbell presses give the greatest positive body changing results.The key to functional exercise is teaching all the muscles to work together rather than isolating them to work individual. Women fitness programs must take postural and stability muscles into account for a better looking and better functioning body.Functional movements improves:

• balance,
• stability and
• coordination

Fast-paced Exercises

It is all about keeping your body in FAT BURNING ZONE…by keeping your heart rate elevated throughout the entire workout. This will not only have your body burning a ton of calories during your workout, you will be burning calories for hours following your workout.

Friggin Hard Work

Achieving a flawless figure is not easy, but it is attainable. Anyone who says you can look a certain way through a magic pill, liquid potion or simply by going on the next ‘hollywood diet’ is simply misinformed with no scientific proof to back them up.

by Nick Nilsson Author of the “Best Back Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of”

You want big arms…thick, solid, powerful-looking big arms.  I can’t think of a single person who has said to me “no, I actually want smaller arms…mine are just too big and muscular.”  Never happens.

But are you actually GETTING big arms from all the direct bicep training you’re doing?

Or are you stuck in a rut, looking at pictures of big arms in magazines and a tape a measure that’s going nowhere.

If so, I can tell you exactly what’s wrong with your training even without having any clue what kind of training you’re doing…you’re not training your back heavy enough.

This is one of the biggest “unsecrets” of bodybuilding…isolation training on the smaller muscles of the arms is not nearly as effective for building size and as compound exercise training on the big muscles of the back and chest.

This is not to say that targeted biceps or tricep training is a waste of time…just that it’s MOSTLY a waste of time if you truly want BIG arms and you have average genetics for building muscle mass.  I cringe when I go to a gym and I see teenage boys with pipe-cleaner arms doing set after set of barbell curls, dumbell curls and preacher curls.

TRULY big arms (biceps specifically) are built on a foundation of heavy training with basic back exercises like chin-ups, rows and yes, even deadlifts.

There are ways you can make your back training target your biceps more specifically, with just a few simple adjustments in body positioning and paths of movement.

For example, when doing chin-ups, if you want to focus on your back, puff your chest out, lean back as you come up and inhale on the way up.  If you want to focus on the biceps, keep your body as vertical as possible, exhale on the way up and keep your chest “unpuffed.”  This simple change in body position focuses more tension onto the biceps.

That being said, I actually find the BEST way to build the biceps is to not try and focus on them directly in back training but to focus on moving as much weight as you can with good form in your normal back training and make your back training a PRIORITY. The bicep gains will come naturally from there.

The biceps are an integral part of the kinetic chain in pulling exercises and will be involved to a large degree whether you try to involve them or not.  When you use exercise variations that focus on the back over the biceps, you’ll be able to use more resistance (or do more reps, if it’s a bodyweight exercise) and the biceps will get more stimulation overall.

And that HEAVY stimulation is what will send your bicep growth through the roof.  Think of it this way…what do you do think will give you more growth…curling with 25 lb dumbells or rowing with a 250 lb barbell?

That, and heavy back training such as deadlifting produces a MUCH greater overall growth response in your body, setting the stage for greater arm size even if the arms aren’t worked directly.

Now, when it comes to exercises, the standard exercises, such as chins, rows and deadlifts, work great and are the perfect place to start.  Just working these exercises harder (or even something as simple as doing them first in your training routine rather than going straight to the barbell curls or bench press) will help.

When you’re ready to get MORE from your back training and really kick your arm size into overdrive, that’s when you need to start incorporating more unique exercise variations into your training…exercises that use novel movement patterns, hitting the back and biceps in ways they’re not accustomed to.

The bottom line is this…if you want big arms…and I mean REALLY big arms…direct arm training is NOT the fastest way to do it.  You have to train your back hard and you have to train your back heavy. Because when you can do weighted chin-ups with 100 lbs hanging off your waist, I can PROMISE you will have big arms.