The financial headlines of the last couple of weeks has been nothing but bad news. I have been interested in the economy for a long time and felt this disaster was inevitable. Even though I was pretty sure the economic day of reckoning was going to come, part of me didn’t want to believe it or at least wanted to believe that maybe the Austrian School of Economics was wrong–they probably aren’t wrong.

So while I have been reading as much as I can about about the likely affects of government’s policies during this crisis that they created, I’ve also been writing about it on my political blog. Granted, this has taken time away from writing on this blog. And since my mind is so focused on the economy and how to best stay dry through this, fitness has not been in the forefront.

So I’m going to kill two birds with one stone and write about staying fit during a bad economy. If the Austrian Economists are correct, this economic downturn could very well turn into one of the worse economic periods the world has ever faced. However, all the economic doom and gloom doesn’t mean we can’t stay in shape!

One of the first things that we are likely to cut from our spending budgets as the economy worsens are our gym memberships. If you go to the more expensive gyms like New York Sports Club or one of their sister gyms in other cities, you are even more likely to cut back on that. There is always the possibility that you will decide to join a more local and less flashy gym or you’ll just forget about the whole going the gym thing altogether.

Either one is fine–you have to cut something from the budget. We certainly don’t need to be part of a gym to workout. It is nice to have access to equipment that we would otherwise not have but, it is not essential. This is a good time to relearn the basics of training for a fully functional body and not a for-show body.

The cheapest workout you can do is one that only requires your body weight. I’ve talked about total body workouts with the gym. All you need is a solid floor, walls, and perhaps a sturdy chair. If you were to have some equipment like a pair of dumbbells, a pull-up bar, and a total-body ball, the amount of exercises you can do is almost limitless. The price tag for all those three things probably cost less than a month at one of the fancier gyms.

One of my absolute favorite books on the topic of working out without any or with limited equipment is the Home Workout Bible from Men’s Health. I’ve had that book for years and it does a fantastic job of describing a mountain of exercises and workouts that you can do without any equipment to having a full gym. This book alone can probably keep you in shape while we weather this economic mess.

We shouldn’t forget that playing sports and running outside is also a great way to keep up the cardio. Running on a treadmill is really more for hamsters than people.

As the economy is likely to continue to sour, you will undoubtly find yourself walking more especially if you live in a big city like New York. We already walk a lot but, we will find ourselves walking even more as money saved from excess cab rides can go towards our vices–or if things get really bad: rent.

Stay strong through this financial disaster. Now might be a good time to stop charging things to those credit cards. :)

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There is this false belief that cardio training is the best way to lose weight. Running on a treadmill or using an elliptical machine burns the most calories while you are using the machine. However, once you stop so will the calorie burn. You may burn a few hundred calories during the 20, 30, 40, or more minutes while you are on the machine and that is it. There are still 23 hours left in the day that you aren’t using to burn more calories–that is a lot of lost opportunity!

The best way to make sure your body is at an elevated state of calorie consumption is to lift weights. If you are one of those anti-weights people, you are going to want to disregard what I just said. A lot of people do. But, unless you can spend several hours a day doing a cardio activity, using it as your main means of weight loss is never going to work. There are so many more hours that aren’t being used! You need to use a better means: muscles.

Muscle requires energy–calories–in order to survive. Every pound of muscle will increase the amount of calories you burn on a daily basis by about 50 calories. However, that is not the sole reason why lifting weights makes losing weight more efficient. Your body will remain at an elevated state of calorie consumption up to 48 hours after a weight training session. So that means you will be burning more calories while you are sleeping, watching TV, at work, or just doing nothing.

Doing cardio will not provide this benefit.

If you are, for whatever reason, completely opposed to lifting weights, you can use sprints to create a similar effect. Using high intensity interval training will provide a similar form of elevated calorie consumption while at rest. Instead of running at a steady pace, you run at a slow to moderate pace with sprints mixed in between. A sprint is not just going faster than you were before but, going as fast as you can.

This form of cardio training does not burn as many calories for every minute you are doing the activity but, will burn more calories in the hours after you stop. It is also a lot more fun to do unless you enjoy monotonous work.

Sprinting will also help you put on some muscle–not as much as lifting weights. It’s benefits for weight loss are comparable to that of weight lifting but, weight lifting is still the better choice. If you fear getting big or muscular, you should really stop. If it was that easy, there would be a lot more bodybuilders walking around. Instead, two thirds of the US population is overweight. Putting on some muscle is the least of our worries.

So go lift weights! Saying you want to lose weight and then not using the best tools to do so is no better than doing nothing.

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Almost everyone admits they want six pack abs–the rest are lying. Guys like them on girls and girls like them on guys. It is totally win-win. The usual and recommended exercise for abs is the crunch or the sit-up. Those aren’t bad exercises to build abdominal muscles but, they are not the best single exercise for developing a six pack. That honor belongs to the plank.

The plank is performed by getting into push up position with your forearms are on the floor. You then tighten your mid-section as if someone was about to punch you in the gut and hold it for 30 seconds. That is one rep. You’ll need to keep your body straight the entire time as well–much like a push-up.

You can also do a side plank which is ideologically the same. The difference is you are lying on your side with your upper body propped up by your left or right elbow and forearm. You then raise your hips until your body forms a straight line from your shoulders to ankles. Now you tighten your abs for 30 seconds and repeat until you’ve completed a set.

If you’ve never done planks before than this might sound easy. In fact, you might think it is a big waste of time. Let me convince you of its benefits and if I can’t, you should still give it a try.

Crunches and sit-ups are very limited abdominal exercises and work a proportionally smaller amount of core muscles than the plank. We use our cores to stabilize our spine, rotate our torso, flex our hips, and more. There is almost no activity you can do that doesn’t require your core to step in and do some of the work. The plank works a lot more muscles in and around your core than the crunch or the sit-up.

It is difficult to target all your six-pack muscles doing crunches because crunches predominantly work the upper abs. The plank will work the entire thing. Some people report that sit-ups create discomforts in their backs and a lot of people who do crunches are really just furiously nodding their heads. It is more difficult to do the plank wrong and cause back discomfort or waste time in a head nodding frenzy.

The plank is the single best exercise for targeting your mid-section. However, the key to a six-pack is body fat and not how long you can hold a plank or how many crunches you can do. It is entirely possible to never do a single ab exercise and come out with a six-pack by reducing your body fat percentage. Generally speaking, you’ll need a body fat percentage in the 10 percent range or below but, it varies by person.

Dropping body fat is going to take more time than the several minutes it takes to do crunches or planks. You can use these tips as a starting point. The best way to get those abs is to work your body’s biggest muscles so that you increase your resting metabolic rate which will help you burn fat faster. Eating well is also important and there is no diet easier than this one. A wise fitness guru once said, “six packs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym”.

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Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but don’t nobody wanna lift no heavy ass weight!”
-Ronnie Coleman, 8-time Mr. Olympia

Tommy wrote a good piece on the myth of toning. I wanted to write one myself since I once fell victim to this popular misnomer. There is considerable amount of ignorance surrounding this concept of toning. I don’t blame you. The fitness industry has standardized the word “toning” to be synonymous with spot reduction—yet another myth.

Spot reduction is the notion that if you work out a specific muscle, you will decrease the amount of fat only in that particular muscle, or “tone” that muscle. It sounds ridiculous, but the majority of people still believe this.

Let’s begin with toning. The real definition of muscle tone is the sustained partial contraction of your relaxed muscles. In other words, it is a measure of muscle functionality. Most people understand toning as changing the structure of a particular area in your body. There are only 4 ways I can think of that will accomplish this: gaining fat, losing fat, gaining muscle, losing muscle. Most people who tone mean they want to build muscle while losing fat.

Rule #1: You cannot alter the shape your muscle takes as you build more muscle. In other words, you cannot alter your genetic disposition. You can only change the perceived shape of your muscles by either losing or gaining body fat.

This brings us to Rule #2: You cannot lose body fat in one particular area in your body. Doing 500 crunches a day won’t get you a flat stomach and washboard abs unless you lose overall body fat of course. When you gain or lose fat, it tends to occur almost proportionally throughout your body. The reason I say almost is because not everyone is the same. Some have trouble losing fat in particular regions such as the chest, the abdominals, and the gluteus. It is simply due to a genetic selective pattern rather than spot reduction.

Guys who go to the gym and do crunches to lose their gut must understand that they have to lose overall body fat and it will tend to occur proportionately. Same thing goes for girls who go to the gym and want to lose fat under their arms or in their butt and thighs. While doing tricep extensions and thigh abductor exercises certainly don’t hurt, it’s not the only or most important thing that will give you a more “toned” look.

It’s better to think in terms of overall muscle growth and overall body fat loss. Muscle growth is crucial for those with this toning goal for 2 reasons. One is that having more muscle indirectly increases your basal metabolic rate. Some studies indicate that a pound of muscle burns about 50 calories a day while a pound of fat burns only 10. While these figures are questionable in other research studies, it’s still conventional wisdom that muscle burns more calories than fat.

Furthermore, other than having little impact on muscle development, light-weight and high-repetition toning work outs have only a minor impact on your post-workout metabolic rate compared to higher intensity workouts. This is simply because you will manipulate more hormone release. Higher intensity workouts will most likely also burn more calories for you directly. One reason is because higher intensity workouts are usually coupled with compound movements, which obviously take a greater toll on your body than simple isolation movements. What do you think burns more calories: 50 repetitions of light-weight bicep curls or 5 repetitions of heavy dead lifts? I’m willing to bet dead lifts would win. Another reason is that people who perform light-weight, high-repetition workouts usually don’t lift to failure, which is a crucial component to resistance training. You don’t pick up a random weight and decide to do 3 sets of 8 and stop at the 8^th repetition on every set. You pick the weight so that on every set, the 8^th repetition is almost impossible. This is just an example. Same thing goes for most other resistance training programs.

Here comes the I-don’t-wanna-lift-heavy-because-I-don’t-wanna-look-bulky posse. Listen, I’m just trying to help you achieve your goals faster. I’m just going to simply explain why lifting heavy weights is not necessarily going to give you a “bulky” look. First is testosterone (assuming mostly females are worried about this phenomenon). Testosterone is the most important muscle-building hormone in your body. Men have this abundantly and women don’t, so it is far easier for men to build muscle. Second, as Tommy mentioned before, it takes years of dedication to have that full-fledged, bodybuilder-type body you see in those fitness magazines. You might even offend some fitness models if you think you’re going to go to the gym and automatically get big if you lift heavy weights. It would be a dream come true if that were to happen.

So next time you go to the gym and decide you want to tone your arms and decide to do bicep curls and tricep extensions mindlessly for 30 minutes, think about how much faster you could achieve your goals if you has a proper weight training regimen.

First, high repetitions are really not as effective as heavy-weight, low-repetition workouts unless you do them correctly, which most people don’t. Repetitions should not go any higher than 15. Any higher and not enough muscle fibers are recruited to innervate increasing levels of anabolic hormones that will make your muscles develop. Also, higher repetition workouts mainly recruit your slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are great for your endurance, but not great for achieving hypertrophy.

Second compound exercises should really be your priority if you’re looking to make a real change in your physique. I’m not saying isolation exercises should be completed removed from your program. I’m saying you should think of them as a supplement to your main program for making minor tweaks. There are a number of reasons why compound exercises will benefit you more. I will discuss a couple. First, far more muscle fibers are recruited from compound exercises. This is obvious. But more muscle fibers being recruited means more hormone stimulation, which is a good thing. Second, you spend less time in the gym. You can pretty much have a full body workout and distress your central nervous system enough to achieve great results with 3 to 6 compound exercises. The same can’t be said for isolation exercises.

I hope I even somewhat enlightened some people regarding this toning and spot reduction myth. I’m not saying that everyone should be doing the same program. Certain programs work best for only certain people. But doing 20 repetitions of anything is certainly not going to give you the results you want.

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The idea of doing 100 push-ups in 100 seconds came to me one day out of the blue. I have never tried doing it simply because such an idea had never crossed my mind. The idea of doing timed push-ups is certainly nothing new in the world. My first experience in doing exercises competitively was in high school. I took a lot of co-ed advanced weight training and one of the teachers liked to do competitions in push-ups, pull-ups, dips, max bench press, etc.

The only event that was timed was the push-ups. No one was really able to do as many pull-ups or dips as they did push-ups. In a pull-up or dip, you are generally moving almost your entire body weight while a push-up only involves about 60% of your body weight.

I never did win a push-up competition in those high school gym class days–I blame my counter. I did win a dip competition but, not because I did an insane amount of dips. Everyone else was just fairly weaker in that department. I won with about 25 - 30 dips–not that impressive.

The greatest number of push-ups I have ever done was 104–I counted 105 in my head but upon video review it was only 104. It took a lot more than 100 secs and the form could have been better at some points. After coming up with this 100 push-ups in 100 seconds challenge, I sent a text message to my closest workout buddy to see what he thought. He thought it was possible. So maybe this idea is more than just an impressive sounding marketing line.

I haven’t been doing push-ups as much as I used to. I used to be able to easily drop and punch out 50 in the past but now, I’m pretty sure I can’t just do that at will. I started training to accomplish this challenge a few weeks ago. My most recent test runs shows that I can do 50 push-ups in under 60 seconds. There is still quite some work to be done to reach 100 in 100.

So far my training has consisted of doing push-ups using a Door Gym–it’s a product that allows you to do pull-ups on a door frame. It provides elevation for my push-ups so I can increase the range of motion and work more muscles. I don’t do these push-ups fast. I have been trying to build strength and endurance so that I could do 100 push-ups for a whole 1 minute and 40 seconds at a constant pace.

In order to build strength and endurance with these push-ups, I pause for 2 seconds at the bottom of the push-up and 2 seconds at the top of the push-up without locking my elbows. It was fairly hard to do just 10 of these at first but, I can do 20 of them now. I have switched to elevating my feet above the floor to increase the difficulty.

I also do chin-ups with the same 2 second pause technique as part of this training. It might seem completely unrelated to do a back exercise but, a strong back will help keep your form when doing push-ups. I also want to make sure I keep things even so I do a back exercise as well.

The last thing I do are plyometric push-ups. I’m trying to build explosive power with these so that I can make sure each push-up will only take 1 second to finish on average because that is all the time I have. Plyometric push-ups are ones where your hands come off the floor because you pushed up with such explosive force.

I have not officially set a deadline for when I want this accomplished. Unless I set a date, this is all meaningless and will probably never get done because I have forever to accomplish it. As I am writing this, I decided that November 1st, 2008 is as good a date as any other–today is the 5th of September. I am not yet half way to the goal and there is less than 2 months until the deadline.

I will continue to report on the results. Assuming I can actually accomplish this, I will provide a video showing it. Otherwise, how will anyone know that I’m not just talking out of my ass? :)

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I never stretch before a workout. I do warm up before a workout. There is a popular myth that claims stretching will help prevent us from injury during a workout. Every gym class I had in high school taught that you should always stretch before any physical activity. The stretches were mundane and didn’t feel like it did anything to prepare me for the coming activity.

It should come to no surprise that the stretching probably did nothing to prepare you or help prevent injuries in your workout. The right idea is to warm up. You want your muscles to be ready to do work. You are better off doing a quick job on the treadmill or some shadow boxing than stretching. You can also try a better warm up stretch. Doing warm up sets isn’t a bad idea either. The point is to prepare your muscles for the activity.

I do like to promote good flexibility so I would certainly encourage doing stretches after a workout or at other times throughout the day. As a precursor to your workout, it isn’t going to do much and could possibly have a negative effect.

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Sometimes you just don’t have access to a gym. Usually, this is when our brains gives us an overwhelming reason to skip a workout. After all, we don’t have access to the equipment we need. I’m going to help you neutralize that excuse with this total body workout that only uses your own body weight.

A lot of guys believe you can’t build serious muscle without going to the gym. This is obviously not true unless you are a modern day bodybuilder. Humans have built hard bodies since ancient times without all the equipment that we have today. Your body weight is more than enough to allow you to pack on some serious muscle. You just need to understand the physics of using your body weight to its maximum potential.

With body weight exercises, you can’t increase the resistance unless you gain weight or are able to adjust gravity. However, you can still make your muscles do more work by increasing the distance it has to move. For example, a regular push-up ends at the floor. You can only go as low as the floor. To increase the distance in this case you can just start higher by putting books or some other object under your hands. Now the floor is further away and you can go lower.

The less contact you have with the floor, the more work your muscles need to do to stay balanced. In a push-up, we have four points of contact with the floor–our hands and feet. To reduce our contact with the floor we can just lift a leg or do one-handed push-ups.

Another simple way to add complexity to a simple workout is to add a twist. Most exercises are done in a single plane meaning we move in one direction. Throw a twist into any exercise and you’ll work more muscles.

Body weight exercises can be just as challenging as weighted exercises. I certainly recommend alternating between the two disciplines. Using your body weight to improve your body has the wonderful advantage of keeping muscles in balance. It also ensures that you’ve built a body that is completely functional. Still, there is nothing better than free weights when it comes to putting on pure muscle.

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I am in favor of going to the gym a few days a week for about an hour each session. I’m not a bodybuilder in training or a professional athlete so why mimic their schedules? A lot of people like to split up their workouts into body parts or groups. I prefer doing a total body workout that lasts about an hour three times a week at most. There are times when I’m starting a new routine where I have to take longer than an hour and that’s fine but certainly no more than 90 minutes.

I’ve tried splitting my workouts into body parts–I never liked it. With a split body part plan, you usually only workout each body part or group once a week. With a total body plan, I hit every muscle three times a week and I do it in half the time. It looks to me that three total body workouts ends up being better than one body part a day.

Working more muscles also leads to more hormones being released which helps your muscles grow even faster. Bodybuilders naturally scoff at this idea and if you asked them for advice, you will more than likely get pointed in the direction of split body parts. Even for bodybuilders, I always encourage them to look into High Intensity Training which advocates less work for better results.

Trying to fit a total body workout into an hour is no easy task. My personal strategy is to have two different routines that I alternate. Each routine is similar in their goals–total body–but, employ different exercises to work some muscles more than others. This keeps things fresh and makes it more difficult for my body to adapt so it will grow even faster.

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If you only had time to do three exercises, what would they be? My natural response would be to hit as many muscles as possible. Right off the top of my head I would pick deadlift, squat, and bent-over row. With those three moves I would have worked the biggest muscles and since they are all compound moves, I would have also worked a lot of muscles.

As much as I like my picks, Men’s Health’s Muscle Guy, Mike Mejia M.S., C.S.C.S chose three different exercises. The idea is pretty much the same but, his moves have a stability factor. I’m all about training your small stabilizer muscles because they are so often ignored. Mike picked the squat and press, swiss ball push-up, and inverted row.

There is a special place in my heart for those three exercises. The squat and press is amongst my favorite compound moves with a pair of dumbbells–add a torso twist in there and it gets even better. The swiss ball push-up is great because it forces you to use a whole bunch of muscles you didn’t even know existed to stabilize yourself. If you’ve never done a push-up on a swiss ball, it’ll take some time to get used to it. It also isn’t easy. The inverted row is one of those exercises that I see few people ever do. It is a great move for your back and all it uses is your own body weight.

There are probably a ton of three exercise groups you can create depending on your objective. The idea behind my picks is to hit the biggest muscles and as many muscles as possible to allow your body to release the most amount of hormones into your body for maximum muscle growth. If I can only do three exercises, I’m going to make sure they accomplish as much as possible.

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