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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.
read comments (1)I’ll admit it. I hate stretching. In fact, I don’t even believe the regular run-of-the-mill stretches are beneficial to your workout. They probably increase flexibility and that is important but why not do those stretches after a workout when your muscles are warm? Why do them when your muscles are cold? Seems pretty illogical to me to try and stretch something that isn’t really ready for it.
I’ve read Mark Verstegen’s Core Performance and take a lot of his ideas to heart. His training methodology is about creating useful bodies–I’m all about that. He preaches more active and dynamic stretches. Amongst my favorite of his stretches is the Inchworm–you’ll find it in his book. You’ll feel like you actually did something after doing this stretch.
The goal of this stretch is to start with your hands in front of your toes and then walking them slowly as far forward as you can and then slowly walking your feet to your hands. It pretty much mimics the movement of a cartoon worm. You should repeat for a set of five. This move stretches your hamstrings, calves, glutes, and lower back. It sure beats any 30 second toe-touch holds–how boring are those?
If you still want to do the stretches they taught you in high school, do them after your workout.
The Caffeine Boost
By Tommy Leung at 08/21/2008 in SupplementsCaffeine is great to help you push a little harder during your workouts. I’m generally against taking any drugs or special supplements to enhance or improve the results of workouts but, caffeine is one of those that I take exception to. I consume caffeine anyway so I don’t see it as anything particularly special. The only supplement I take is whey protein.
My caffeine consumption comes from coffee or energy drinks like Red Bull. It is hard to tell if it really does anything. I have noticed that I am able to go harder when I’ve had caffeine opposed to not having caffeine. It may be a mental affect where I think it gives me more energy so I end up having more anyway. Caffeine does give you a boost so chances are, it is going to improve speed and endurance during your workout.
Millions of people consume caffeine daily in one way or another and it has been used throughout human history. If you are looking for a boost that isn’t synthetically created or involves a whole lot of scientific compounds that you don’t understand, caffeine may be your best bet. I often have Red Bull in the fridge and of course, coffee.
Lift Heavy and Fast for Explosive Gains
By Tommy Leung at 08/20/2008 in Fitness, Muscle Building, Strength TrainingLift 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.
I’m not the biggest fan of long distance running unless it is in the name of competition. I can tolerate it a lot more when I am outside where the ground isn’t always the same and other factors can at least surprise you. Hamster running on a treadmill is by far my most hated gym activity. With that being the case, you can probably guess that I don’t do much of it.
Instead of long marathonesque running, I always prefer interval sprints or what is more popularly known as High Intensity Interval Training–HIIT. The idea behind HIIT is that you put light-pace work in between short sprints where you go as hard as you can. My usual HIIT treadmill routine is a light two minute jog followed by loops of a 30 second sprint and a one minute 30 second light jog resting period until I hit 20 minutes. I also raise the incline of the treadmill to better mimic real outdoors running.
I haven’t used my treadmill routine in a while because I’ve been running outdoors–the weather is nice so why not go outside? I happen to live in an somewhat hilly area. My general route leads me going mostly downhill in the beginning and then mostly uphill the rest of the way. I use the same HIIT concept except I do the sprints when I am going uphill. The hills keep the running interesting and challenging.
Now only recently, I’ve started sprinting up this rather steep hill. I don’t know exactly how steep it is but, when I drive my car up it, I can feel the car really trying–I drive a Nissan Altima. From my perspective, sprinting up relatively steep hills is a lot more satisfying than a couple mile run with small hill sprints throughout.
It is known that HIIT is a better way to torch fat because it creates a similar effect as weight lifting: increased caloric usage throughout the day regardless of what you are doing. Taking the concept of HIIT and nature’s landscape will help you lose fat faster and be a lot more fun than time spent on the human hamster wheel.
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.
I love watching the Summer Olympics every four years. I rarely watch the winter games–I enjoy the X Games year round. The best athletes in the world come together to compete and show the world what they’ve worked so hard to accomplish in the last several years of their lives. Olympic athletes train for hours everyday for years. Their dedication to becoming the best athlete that they can be is astounding.
The rest of us can’t afford to put our focus solely on being an athlete–let alone an Olympic caliber one. While Olympians may be superhuman, we can still take lessons from them and apply it to our lives. Here are seven fitness lessons that we can learn from the Olympics.
The discipline and mental attitude of an Olympian is what gives them their edge. Most of us can’t even stick to a workout plan or goal for more than a few weeks. They work steadily for years constantly believing in what they are doing. Results rarely come overnight. It takes a strong mind to weather the storms without getting discouraged and giving up.
If we only have one take away, it should be the strong mental attitude; to always believe that we can achieve whatever goal we set forth. It might not come instantly but, we will get there if we stay focused and keep working at it. Worthwhile goals don’t come easy or they wouldn’t be worthwhile.
Once upon a time, the idea of eating fat to lose fat–or weight–seemed like a pretty silly thing to do; oxymoronic, if you will. I had some weight loss talk with co-workers recently and they thought I was out of my mind when I bashed the Food Pyramid–and this newer Food Pyramid–and recommended a much more simpler system of giving percentages to carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.
This article explains some more fat fighting tips including using fat to fight fat. My basic nutritional guideline is to adjust the percentage of carbs, proteins, and fats that I consume depending on what I’m trying to do–protein usually gets the largest share of the pie.
The seemingly insane idea of consuming 20% of your diet as fat isn’t so ridiculous when you understand a few things. It is true that a gram of fat has more than two times the calories of a gram of carbs or proteins. Obviously eating a lot of fat is not going to do you much good. However, limiting your fat consumption to some ridiculously low level by replacing it with more carbs is not going to help you either.
The closest thing we have to the Fountain of Youth is exercise. Scientific research has found that running eases the aches of aging. This study tracked people over the age of 50 and found that those who ran about 4 hours a week were able to delay the effects of aging by about 16 years.
I believe the best form of exercise to keep you young is weight training. It’ll help maintain muscle mass and bone density as we get older. Running and cardio exercise is great but, hitting the weights is probably the best bet for staying young. Of course, you can lift weights and do cardio. In that case, you might live forever.
To follow up my previous post about push-ups and to continue my love for this particular exercise, Men’s Health has a great article about the different variations of the push-up for a more total body exercise. By the time you’re able to do 50 straight push-ups, you should employ some of these variations to your routine to keep things fresh. Muscles respond best when you shock them with new and different exercise routines.
The push-up has the wonderful quality of being able to not only work your chest, shoulders, and triceps like the bench press but, also your back, abs, and glutes. These variations will work even more muscles as they’ll force you to use the often ignored stabilizing muscles.