The Benefits of Cardio when Building Muscle

If you want to build muscle, do you perform cardio?  I know there are plenty of people out there who swear black and blue that cardio is definitely not going to assist in building muscle.  In fact, many people would suggest that cardio will necessarily hamper muscle gain.  I disagree.

There is plenty of research out there to suggest that cardio, nutrition and resistance training can work together to symbiotically enhance the muscle building process.  In fact, there are several specific advantages to cardio that are often overlooked.  High intensity cardio can:

• Enhance your weight lifting performance
• Improve your fitness to further improve lifting performance
• Boost your general health (this is an obvious benefit to building muscle)
• Induce anabolic hormone secretion
• Develop your mental strength and focus in the weights room

And of course high intensity cardio has the added benefit of significant fat loss!

But I don’t want you to take my word for it.  I recently published a comprehensive review of a number of studies on the benefits of cardio when building muscle, entitled “Cardio & Bodybuilding – Good for Muscle Growth?”

This month, Australian IronMan (a leading Australian bodybuilding and fitness magazine) just published this article on pages 94-96.  You can buy it at your local newsagent or alternatively read the online version of “Cardio is Not the Enemy”

At the end of the day, if you want to obtain maximum results, you need a balance between all aspects of training.  This includes cardio, nutrition, weight training and recovery.

Share on Facebook

Building Muscle with Carbohydrate, Fat and Protein

Well over three years ago, I conducted a survey for the general public where one of the questions was “What is the most important nutrient when trying to build muscle?“.  The options were:

• Protein
• Carbohydrate
• Fat
• A combination of the above

It may come as little surprise to know that the most common answer was protein.  My hat goes off to the supplement companies who have marketed their protein products exceptionally well.  No, I’m not being sarcastic, they have actually done a phenomenal job in convincing the “Average Joe” that protein is so superior to fats and carbohydrates that protein alone can do a better job at building muscle than a combination of all three!

But the objective and proven science paints a completely different picture.  Upon reading the “actual” research, it becomes very obvious that protein in isolation is useless at building muscle.  Carbohydrates and fats in isolation are also useless in building muscle.  It is well established, with all other considerations being disregarded, that without doubt (among the scientific community at least) that a combination of carbohydrate, fat and protein is essential to even consider building muscle mass.

Let’s return to the misconception that protein is the most important nutrient.  Yes, it is an important nutrient, but it is equally important as fats and carbohydrates.  Proteins are the main consituents of muscle cells when considering these three nutrients.  So it comes as no surprise that is it easily assumed that protein is the most important because it is the most abundant.  Not true at all.  Proteins do not just get absorbed into the blood stream and into the muscle which therefore increases in size.  There are many chemical reactions that happen in the process.

Carbohydrates have a major role in building muscle.  Protein synthesis (or muscle building) cannot occur without the presence of insulin.  Insulin is secreted in response to an increase in blood glucose.  Guess how blood glucose typically rises?  Through the ingestion of carbohydrate.  Of course, carbs are vitally important for many other processes including energy production, assisting the breakdown of fatty acids, promoting good health etc.

Fats are responsible for a miriad of processes.  One process that is particularly important for building muscle is hormone production.  In particular testosterone, which is required for muscle sythesis, is significantly hindered by a super-low fat diet.  Other important functions of fats include energy production, maintaining healthy cholesterol, nutrient transport and maintaining healthy skin.

Building muscle is like a jigsaw.  You need all the pieces in their correct places in order to stimulate an optimal degree of muscle growth.  The elimination of carbohydrate or fat from your diet will have highly undesirable effects.

If you are interested in finding out more about this topic, I highly recommend that you sign up to our free course which discusses nutrition in far more detail.  The course is called Conquering Your Body.

Share on Facebook

The Most Effective Workouts

Within many of my articles and blog posts, there is one theme that is consistent. Ironically, this consistent theme is consistency!

If you want to achieve something big in life, you need to be persistent in your endeavours to achieve that significant goal. If that goal includes weight loss, muscle gain, fitness enhancement or improving your health, then consistency is key. By being consistent, you develop a routine and you therefore do not have to make conscious decisions about moving toward your goal – it just happens because it’s all automatic! After all, it is commonsensical to know that you cannot expect to apply yourself intermittently and expect great results.

So what has consistency got to do with the most effective workouts? A lot in fact. I am of the strong belief that the most effective workouts are the ones you don’t want to do. Allow me to explain.  Consider this:

You have been exercising regularly for the past week. You’ve just got home from a long, stressful day at the office. It’s Thursday evening and you really just want to RELAX. As much as you want to lose 10kg of weight, you figure that you have earned the right to skip your gym workout. So, you snuggle up for the night and decide to forget about the gym workout.

I’m sure that you can relate to this situation – we all encounter days like these where the last thing you want to do is worry about weight loss (or whatever your goal may be)! But consider what is actually going on here. You are justifying your actions to break your consistent weight loss regime. Quite frankly, there is no valid reason why you cannot exercise – you just don’t feel like it in the moment.

Now what happens if you have another tiresome day on Friday? Maybe not as tiresome as Thursday, but still enough to justify a quiet night on Friday also. After all, what’s one more missed workout going to accumulate to?

You can see where I’m going with this. It’s a slippery slope – one missed workout can lead to another, which may inevitably lead to the loss of all consistency whatsoever. I have seen it happen time and time (and time) again.

This is precisely why the most effective workouts are the ones you don’t want to do. If you can develop the discipline to ignore the “excuse maker” within you and just get on with the job, you WILL remain consistent and therefore significantly enhance your chances of successfully achieving your goals.

The fact is that, once you have established a routine, workouts become automatic. The hardest part in achieving a weight loss goal is developing that routine. The reason – because it is too easy to miss the most effective workouts.

Share on Facebook

Drinking Water – How much, too much and too little

Water is such a vital ingredient when trying to improve your health or achieve a particular fitness goal, yet it is often overlooked.  I thought that I would share some information within my blog about water.  Some of this has been extracted from our free weight loss course, Conquering Your Body Course

Water, or H2O, is a nutrient.  Without water we cannot survive, nor can we be healthy or grow.  The typical adult human body contains approximately 58-65% water, which is just under two thirds of it’s total body mass.  Water is therefore a very important nutrient that is required in very large amounts relative to other nutrients.

Water also has many functions within the human body, including:

• A solvent for nutrients
• Transport mechanism for nutrients around the body
• Elimination of waste products
• Lubrication of joints
• Absorbing shock inside the eyes and spinal cord
• Regulating the body’s temperature

Of course, too much or too little water can result in some undesirable consequences:

Too much water (Water intoxification or hyponatremia)

• Fatigue
• Light headedness
• Weakness
• Cramping
• Weight gain
• Nausea
• Headache
• Dizziness
• Confusion
• Fainting
• Disorientation
• Seizures
• Coma
• Death

Too little water (Dehydration)

• Thirst
• Decreased performance output ability
• Weakness
• Headaches
• Hypotension
• Fainting
• Convulsions
• Cardiac arrest
• Increased pulse and breathing rates
• Death

As a basic guideline, 2-3 Litres is recommended for the general population.  However, the more exercise you undertake, the greater your water requirements would be.

A good way to ascertain how much water you should drink when exercising is to weigh yourself before and after your workout.  If you lose weight, you would have lost fluids, so you need to drink more.  If you gain weight, you have consumed more fluids than you have lost.

Share on Facebook

Why to NOT Lose Weight Quickly

If you’re considering weight loss, chances are that you’re after fast weight loss  and the ability to maintain your new physique in the long-term.  When presented in such a simplified manner, taking an approach to lose weight quickly seems viable.  Yet in practice, fast weight loss more often than not has detrimental long-term effects.

Although we specialise with 12 week transformations, something that I repeat numerous times is that the initial 12 weeks of training is the time in which you develop new long-term habits for sustainable weight loss.  12 weeks is not a period where the typical sedentary person you should go “all-out” and try to lose all excess weight as quickly as possible.

There is an important point to be raised here, which is essential to anyone seeking to transform their physique in the long-term. If you want to achieve long-term success, you need to get away from an “all-or-nothing” mentality. If you approach weight loss with such a mindset, you may obtain GREAT weight loss results initially, but as you (inevitably and understandably) slip up, you will feel that your efforts have been completely compromised.

This discouragement as a consequence of your mistake (as minor as it may be) can be highly detrimental to your progress and result in all that weight piling back on.

In theory, this sounds trivial.  In practice, this mindset can very easily cause you to fall into a psychological pit of guilt that does significantly more harm than good.

This is precisely why people who undertake fad diets gain more weight than they lose.  It’s not because the diet isn’t conductive of weight loss, quite the opposite actually.  The diet is such a contrast to the persons normal (and typically unhealthy) lifestyle habits that they lose weight REALLY quickly.  Cravings kick in and eventually a binge results from self-deprivation of loved foods.  This is not to mention most other food groups that are typically forbidden by fad diets.

Always remember that you are human and you will make mistakes. It is not plausible to expect yourself to adhere to a strict diet, lose weight quickly and then be able to maintain this result.  In fact, once you come off the “diet”, how are you going to maintain that weight?  Are you:

a. Going to stay on the diet indefinitely (Chances are you will be malnourished)

b. Revert back to your old eating habits (You will gain all the weight back)

c. Establish new and healthier lifestyle habits  (Why don’t you skip the diet and just follow this option in the first place?  If your revised lifestyle habits are conductive of maintaining a lighter bodyweight, then they will also result in weight loss at your heavier bodyweight.)

Ultimately, you need to focus on a “balance” mentality. Factor in cheat meals and slip ups. It is my belief that if you eat 80% well, you will lose weight. No, you won’t lose as much weight as eating 100% well in the short term, but you WILL lose more weight than eating 100% well in the long-term. It sounds counter-intuitive, but for the vast majority of people, eating 100% well results in a “falling off the wagon” scenario weeks into their weight loss endeavours. Hence why it is not a viable long-term approach.

This mindset of “lose weight quickly” is very, very common.  For this reason, we have a whole truckload of articles on Amino Z that deal with this very topic.  Here are a few of interest:

How to Lose Weight

Tony Ferguson Weight Loss Program Review…A Fad Diet?

Fad Diet, Fad Result

Share on Facebook

Respecting Others in the Gym

Is there something about others in the gym that really annoys you?  I’m sure that at some point in your gym membership, you have experienced some form of frustration from another member.  I know I’ve had my fair share!

Ultimately, the gym is there to share.  Respect within the gym goes a long way so everyone can have an enjoying a fulfilling experience.  It is important that you and others follow the unwritten “gym etiquette” so everyone comes out a winner.  Let’s go discuss some important considerations to respecting others in the gym:

Share the equipment

There is nothing more frustrating than having to wait half an hour for a machine (yes, I have once waited half an hour for a machine!).  Sure, you may have a rigid training program that requires you to perform a large number of sets on one machine.  But for heavens sake, if someone has been waiting for a while, offer to work in with them.  Both parties can then get their workout done and everyone’s happy!

If the weights are too heavy, don’t pick them up in the first place!

Nothing annoys me more than guys who pick up the heaviest weights possible, perform a set and then drop them from a height.  Apart from risking the toes of any people within close vicinity, it is completely obnoxious.  Personally, I train with heavy weights.  Yet no matter how heavy they are, I am still able to put them down without breaking a few floor boards!

Turn down the volume

I’ve done my fair share of grunting in the past, but I do think that there is a limit.  At any gym, you will have the odd person that accentuates their grunts to the point at which you no longer know if they are lifting weight or dying.  Sure, grunt a little if you need to…but don’t overdo it.

Put the weights back

The gym that I train at is a classic example of this.  There are clearly labelled positions for the dumbbells ranging from 2.5 to 50kg.  How 12.5kg’s end up in the 40kg spot baffles me.  By doing this, it confuses the hell out of new members and wastes time while the others try to find the correct weights (that’s if they are actually on the rack).

Respect other’s training methods

This is a big one with the guys.  Everyone trains differently and your way of training isn’t the only way.  If someone is doing something that you don’t think is the most effective way to achieve a goal, sure, advise them.  But also consider the fact that they may know something that you don’t.

Wipe down your machine

Common sense really, but this is a big one when respecting others in the gym.

Wear Deodorant…Please!

This is a no brainer, but c’mon guys (and girls).  A little bit of spray goes a long way!

That’s my rant for the week!  Have a great weekend!

Share on Facebook

Benefits of an Online Personal Trainer

An online personal trainer can be a great help to you in directing you toward your health and fitness goals.

As the fitness industry continues to mature, more niche options arise.  It’s only really been in the last few years that online personal trainer’s have begun to receive some significant exposure as a viable alternative to a classical face-to-face personal trainer.

So what are the main benefits of hiring an online personal trainer?  Let’s discuss some primary benefits:

Higher Level of Support

This is one of the most profound benefits to hiring an online personal trainer.  A classical professional would provide you with support during the session.  During the remainder of the week, you can be left to your own devices.  However an online PT can answer questions whenever you like to keep you on track!

No Appointments

Gone are the days where you have to book in with your professional for a one hour exercise session.  Now, you can communicate with your trainer regularly and thus stay motivated and accountable throughout the entire week.

Avoid Embarrassment

Some people get embarrassed training with a trainer in a commercial gym.  If you fall into this category, then an online personal trainer may be of greater benefit to you.  This way, you can focus on your program rather than feeling self conscious.  Your exercise and eating plans will be provided to you along with all the 1on1 support you need.

Exercise at Your Own Pace

If you dislike training with a personal trainer in the flesh and would prefer to train by yourself or with a friend, then an online personal trainer can be a great solution.  You are provided with the plans to follow, which you can do so at your own pace.

Exercise Wherever You Like!

Because your own dedicated professional is on the internet, they can reach you no matter where you live!  You can live in a regional area, or go on a business trip to the other side of the world and still have that same professional keeping you on track!

Of course, this type of fitness professional is not suited to everyone.  Personally, I feel that it is best to proceed with a face-to-face trainer if you are elderly or have serious health concerns.  In such circumstances, it may be far safer and beneficial to you to opt for 1 on 1 support.

At Amino Z, we do offer award-winning online personal training solutions to help you to transform yourself in 12 weeks.  If you are interested, we invite you to find out more about our online personal training services.

Share on Facebook

Top Five Exercise Myths

Let’s discuss five exercise myths.  These five exercise myths have got to be the most common questions I receive from clients, visitors and friends.  So, why not make a list!

Exercise Myth #1: You can focus on losing fat from a specific area through exercise.

I know I blogged about this yesterday, but this topic is a hot one.  You cannot perform a specific exercise in order to reduce fat tissue from a particular area.  This myth is known as “spot reduction”.

The body breaks down fat tissue in order to provide muscles with energy for force generation and recovery.  The sites at which the fat is broken down from is left completely up to your genetic makeup and not the type of exercise you are performing.  For example, you may be running, yet you may lose more fat from your stomach than your thighs.

A common implication of this myth is on many television commercials.  Have you seen an ad that suggests to perform a crunching motion to flatten your stomach?  Or have you seen an infomercial that advises to use a particular leg machine in order to tighten up your thighs?  Now you are aware that a specific exercise does not target a specific site for fat loss.

Exercise Myth #2: You can convert fat into muscle

This is a big misconception.  If you look at fat cells and muscle cells under a microscope, you will realise that they are completely different in structure.  The properties of fat cells include energy storage and insulation, whilst muscle fibres generate force and provide mobility.  Of course, there are many other functions of fat and muscle cells.

With regards to fat and muscle mass, there are only two processes that can occur with each individually:

• An increase in total mass
• A decrease in total mass

So, you can gain or lose muscle mass.  You can also gain or lose fat mass.  However, you cannot convert fat into muscle mass.  If this were true, it would be an interesting world where personal trainers would firstly advise to gain significant fat tissue and then convert it into muscle!

Exercise Myth #3: You can convert muscle into fat

As above, muscle cells and fat cells are completely different.

A classic example that I often hear is of the typical athlete who stops training and all of a sudden, all their muscle is perceived to turn into fat.  Not quite – so let’s analyse what is really going on here.

An athlete is extremely active and therefore expends a high degree of calories each day.  In order to fuel his/her body, they need to eat a lot of food, relative to the average person.  When he/she stops training, it is not uncommon to remain on a similar diet.  Because their energy expenditure is far less, yet their calorie intake is similar, they will now gain a substantial amount of fat tissue.

With regards to muscle mass, the phrase “use it or lose it” sums up what is happening here.  Muscle tissue is a burden on the body because it requires a high amount of daily energy just to sustain itself.  If the athlete is no longer training and thus no longer require the same degree of muscle mass, they will experience a loss of muscle tissue.

Exercise Myth #4: You can change the shape of a muscle

Your muscles are the shape that they are due to your genetic make-up.  There is no exercise that you can perform to change the shape of your muscles.  You can increase or decrease the size of your muscles, yet you cannot change their physical shape.

Think of your muscles as a balloon.  You can inflate or deflate that balloon, yet they are going to remain the same shape.

I have been asked a number of times if guys can change the shape of their pec muscles by changing up between dumbbell or barbell work.  This isn’t possible at all.

Exercise Myth #5: Cardio is for fat loss, weights are for muscle gain

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Weight training can significantly enhance fat loss by:

• Placing your body in a state of recovery and thus increasing calorie expenditure and fat oxidation (or breakdown)
• Increasing the degree of muscle mass and thus increasing your daily calorie expenditure (remember, muscles burn lots of calories!)
• Increasing your daily calorie output by the actual exercise performed

Cardiovascular exercise can actually have some very positive effects upon muscle gain.  If you are concerned about cardio impacting muscle growth, I strongly recommend that you have a read of my article, “Cardio & Bodybuilding – Good for Muscle Growth?”

They have got to be five of the top exercise myths that I am asked regularly.  I hope they provided some enlightenment!

Share on Facebook

Female Gym Workouts

Here is something I have observed over the years.  No matter which gym I train at, there is a typical workout structure to the female gym workout.  Here are some exercises that I’ve noticed as a general trend:

Typical “female gym workouts”

• Cardio
• Leg abduction machine
• Leg adduction machine
• Leg press machine
• Leg extension machine
• Leg curls machine
• And more cardio

Now there’s nothing “wrong” with this.  In fact I think it’s great that people are getting active and being proactive in improving their body!  However, I do want to make some suggestions on how to improve the effectiveness of such an approach.

I’m going to make the assumption that the “typical” female gym workout primarily is aimed at toning the lower body.  By toning, I am referring to a combination of fat loss and muscle gain in order to increase the degree of definition.  I make this assumption because that is a very typical goal for many of my female clients.

It’s perfectly natural to assume that by working the lower body, you are going to enhance tone to the lower body.  But I do believe that this is a very narrow-minded approach.

Firstly, to tone up, we need to stimulate some degree of muscle growth, with typically more emphasis on fat loss.  Leg press is a great way to accomplish either of these objectives.  Leg curls can be useful because many typical compound leg movements don’t recruit the hamstrings to the same degree as the quadriceps and glutes.  But for heavens sake, ditch the abduction and adduction machines.  Honestly, these are a complete waste of time and effort.  You will be stimulating these muscles on nearly any compound leg movement.  Plus, these exercises do relatively little regarding calorie expenditure.

Another problem with this example workout is that it is very focussed on lower body.  An imbalanced workout is not only going to inhibit your results, but also increase the risk of injury.  For if your lower body is extremely strong, yet your upper body is extremely weak, you increase the risk of injury.  This is typical in many daily tasks, such as lifting something fairly heavy.  The legs can cope, but the upper body will struggle to maintain correct posture and control.

Never overlook the advantages of weight training with regards to fat loss within your female gym workout.  Cardiovascular and good nutrition alone will only provide a proportion of your potential fat loss results.  Weight training does two things – it stimulates a significant degree of fat loss AND aids in increasing muscle mass, thus increasing your daily calorie expenditure!  So perform a full body program and you will begin to really accelerate your results!

It is important to consider that you cannot spot reduce.  In other words, by training legs, you are not going to target fat loss from your legs.  Your body decides where fat is broken down from.  So in actual fact, a leg press could stimulate more fat loss from your waist than your thighs!

Oh, and don’t be afraid of bulking up.  Females have far less testosterone readily available relative to males.  Testosterone is required for muscle synthesis.  So, muscle growth is going to be an extremely slow process.

I hope this sheds some light on female gym workouts.  If you’d like to know more on weight loss and toning, I would highly recommend that you sign up to our free course, Conquering Your Body!

Share on Facebook

Reducing Stress with Exercise

Stress affects us all to varying degrees.  Personally, prior to exercising on a regular basis, I was a major stress head.  I remember suffering from major insomnia because I was so stressed about an exam the following day.  This was in high school.

But for many people, stress can be far worse than what I have experienced personally.  Sure, insomnia isn’t pleasant (and can be very serious) but some other serious serious side effects of stress include hair loss, high blood pressure, ulcers, rashes, depressing the immune system, heart problems…need I continue?

Of course, there are many measures that you can take to prevent the onset of stress.  Good nutrition and supplementation with B-group vitamins in particular has been shown to assist in reducing stress by enhancing brain function.  Relaxation techniques can also be of great use.  However, from both personal and professional experience, exercise is such a powerful tool that practically everyone has available in order to combat stress.

There is a lot of research going into the benefits of corporations encouraging employees to exercise around the world.  It’s fairly conclusive that it is well worth the company’s investment to get employees to exercise in order to reduce stress and boost productivity.

Following a bout of exercise, your brain releases friendly hormones termed endorphins.  These are major stress fighting molecules!  You may have noticed that after a bout of exercise, you feel calm and relaxed.  This has colloquially been referred to as a “runners high” because you are actually getting a “high” from a flood of endorphins.

Personally speaking, whilst I exercise for a range of reasons (my profession, health, body composition, fitness, brain function etc.) I also utilise exercise as a form of therapy to combat stress and boost productivity.

Running a business can be stressful at times and whilst I love what I do, stress can be significant hindrance to my daily productivity.  For this reason, I aim to exercise at least 5 times a week, typically around lunch time.  What I’ve found from personal experience is that I wake up feeling energised and rearing to go.  Late morning after hours of non-stop work, my brain begins to cloud up and stress can sometimes build up.  So I’ll typically exercise around this time to clear my head and get those endorphins secreted.  Following the workout, I feel relaxed, clear headed, motivated and highly productive.

Take today as an example.  Monday is the day in which I am often most stressed because I have a truckload of emails and personal training client feedback to attend to.  11.30am this morning I departed for the gym, performed a high intensity 15 minute bout of cardio, nearly collapsed, stretched and then returned to the office.  I came back to the office feeling GREAT and finished everything ahead of time (hence why my blog post is 2 hours early!).  Even now at 5.30 I am feeling so relaxed.  It’s amazing what 15 minutes can do.

Your situation will be different to mine.  Maybe you are unable to exercise in the middle of the day.  Maybe you prefer to exercise when you first wake up.  Whatever your scenario, use exercise to your advantage to combat against stress.  I cannot quantify the magnitude to which exercise boosts my productivity by reducing stress, yet if I could, it would be  pretty darn big!

So, reducing stress with exercise is a very powerful tool within your arsenal.  Use it!

Share on Facebook