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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The weather is starting to cool down and the cold months of winter will be here before we know it. People are biologically designed to gain weight over the winter. We needed it back in the days of caves to ensure that we would survive the extra cold and lowered amount of available food. Luckily for us, we have heaters and food just as available to us in the winter as it is in the summer.

While human society has evolved and improved, we haven’t biologically adapted to this relatively new way of living. Food is certainly not going to be in short supply as we have Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and a bunch of other holidays in the last quarter of the year. Over eating is going to be anything but difficult.

We also get lazier with our workouts when it gets cold. If you normally workout in the morning, you’ll be more inclined to stay in your warm comfortable bed instead of hitting the gym. The cold is going to give you many reasons to skip workouts or do them half-heartily. After all, everyone is going to be bundled up in layers upon layers so a few pounds won’t be so noticeable.

So, how can you reduce the impact of the winter weight gain or even avoid it altogether? Assuming you are still going to be seduced by the warm beds and delicious holiday foods, your best bet is to build some extra muscle right now.

If you are likely to skip workouts and end up consuming more food, you’ll need to increase the amount of calories you burn on a daily basis to lessen the impact. The only way–without drugs–is to pack on some extra muscle to help you burn about 50 extra calories a day per pound of muscle by just existing. If you just add 1 extra pound of muscle, you’ll burn through an extra 1500 calories in a month without lifting a finger.

If your main activity at the gym is some sort of cardio activity like the treadmill or the elliptical, go grab some weights. You aren’t going to gain any muscle by running on a glorified hamster wheel. You might, in fact, lose muscle.

For those who already lift on a regular basis, now might be a good time to switch up your workout if you have been doing the same thing for a while. Once muscles adapt to a routine, the gains will slow down. I recommend doing 3 total body routines a week hitting all the major muscle groups with as many compound exercises as possible.

Try to incrementally increase the amount of weight you use each workout if you can. So, if you started doing squats at 135 lbs–bar and two 45 lb plates–you’ll want to add another 5 lbs next time or the time after that. People often stay at a certain weight for far longer than they should. To make the most gains as quickly as possible, you will want to make sure the exercise stays difficult.

What you should not do are exercises like forearm curls or calf raises or something else that works a tiny muscle. For the purposes of packing on muscle to ignite your natural fat burners, working muscles as tiny as your forearms are a big waste of time and energy.

Here is my pick for three compound exercises that you should have in your workout to maximize muscle growth. And for those who don’t have access to a gym, you might want to take a look at this total body workout without a gym.

This is the best way to prevent, minimize, or avoid the winter weight gain that you’ve probably experienced every year for as long as you’ve cared. There is a reason why losing weight is such a popular New Year’s resolution–everyone gained extra weight in the months just before. Sadly, winter doesn’t end with the New Year and the excuses to skip workouts are still in full force.

Make sure you are spending the reduced amount of time at the gym wisely by using it to build more muscle. The magical calorie burning gift of muscles aren’t just limited to the cold months so you’ll continue to benefit after the winter. Ignite your body’s natural fat burners to keep you lean.

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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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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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There is a common myth believed by a lot of people. It is taught by high school gym teachers–at least mine did. It is given as advice and accepted as truth. It is the myth of creating muscle tone by lifting light weights a very high number of repetitions. The reality is that lifting a light weight a ton of times is going to do nothing–at least not what you are looking to do.

I’ve always wondered where this myth came from or why people believe that it makes any sense. I believed it once upon a time until Men’s Health set me straight. It may make sense if you believe you can spot reduce fat–you can’t. Fat is lost proportionally throughout the body. Some places will always have more fat than others. Trying to spot reduce fat through exercise is literally an exercise in futility.

A more fundamental question to ask is why do people want to “tone”? I don’t think anyone is actually trying to improve muscle tone but rather, muscle definition. The toning crowd wants muscle definition but doesn’t want to be huge. They fear looking like a bodybuilder. I find that laughable because they think they can go to the gym and lift hard enough to even remotely achieve those kinds of results. It takes years of dedication to look like the bodybuilders we see on TV. So, you toners, let’s not get ahead of yourselves.

The only way to achieve muscle definition is to reduce body fat so that your muscles show through better. The process of lifting a light weight doesn’t do much for fat loss–you are absolutely better off on the treadmill. To speed up the process of muscle definition you can reduce fat and make your muscles bigger. A bigger muscle will look more defined. Worrying about becoming Arnold is really the least of your worries. Go grab something heavy that you can lift 8 - 12 times; not something you can lift 30 or more times.

Now, if you really are one of those people who believe in this toning myth, I really hope you try what I’m suggesting. Toning really is a gigantic waste of time. Lifting heavier weights will actually be work. It will be a lot harder than lifting bean cans but, you’ll actually be accomplishing something! I have a friend who used to believe this myth. I showed him the light. He is now in the best shape I’ve ever seen him. He doesn’t look like a bodybuilder and he probably never will. However, he is lean and mean–more “toned” than ever before.

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Lift heavy and fast? Theoretically, it is impossible. Your body takes more time to gather the resources required to move a heavy weight than it does a light weight. However, if you were able to lift a heavy weight fast, you would theoretically get phenomenal results in the shortest amount of time.

Since you can’t really lift heavy and fast, we’ll have to use a trick that is almost the same. The benefits is not something to ignore. This article talks about this particular trick and a handful of others. The idea behind lifting heavy and fast is to lift heavy and then immediately lift fast. This is actually very similar to the concept of drop sets except you aren’t aiming to lift to failure and then going to a lower weight.

To use the heavy and fast trick, you’ll want to use a weight that you can lift about 5 times without going to failure. Immediately after the 5 reps, you will do an explosive exercise targeting the same muscle. If you started with a bench press, you could follow with plyo-pushups or some other weight that will allow you to lift fast.

You can do this with any muscle or muscle group. You just need a heavy regular lift and an explosive move to immediately follow it with.

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My favorite variation on the dumbbell curl is the Static Curl. I generally recommend this curl when you are trying to breakthrough a plateau or you so happen to be bored with the regular bicep curls. The static curl works exceptionally well because it forces your bicep work at the toughest part of the curl–when your arm is parallel to the floor or 90 degrees with your body.

The static curl keeps one of your arms in that position while the other arm does normal reps. Once you finish those reps, you switch so that your other arm will stay in that static position while the other does its reps. Just to make myself clear, both arms will be holding dumbbells.

Your static arm will be contracted, tense, and working hard the entire time your other arm is working. If you have never done this variation on the curl before, try it. It will probably kick your ass. Especially if you are one of those people who swing their bodies while doing curls–you might want to try a lower weight in that case.

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