Not just another pretty face

Congrats to our very own Christina DeMaria! She and her family have been training with us for the last three years and they are some of the genuinely nicest people we know. Kudos to SI for recognizing such a classy individual. Here is the link to the article.

Rick Mayo

Fat Burning Zone?

Q. I recently joined a large health club and they recommended that I pay for some heart rate testing. They explained that I may be working out too hard and not burning fat. They suggested that I buy a heart rate monitor from them and make sure that I stayed in my "fat burning zone". Does this sound right to you?

I really thought that this ridiculous exercise prescription had gone away with thong leotards. It all stems from studies that support that you burn a larger percentage of your calories from fat at a lower heart rate. While this may be true, the "fat burning" heart range is so low that you are not burning a lot of overall calories. Would you rather burn 50% of 300 calories (150) or 30% of 900 calories(300) from fat? Of course, 300 fat calories makes more sense and because the intensity is higher, it is going to take you half as much time to burn the extra calories. Here is a post from Alwyn Cosgrove explaining this theory in a different way:

Homeostasis is the property of a living organism, that regulates its internal environment so as to maintain a stable, constant condition.

When you don't drink enough water in the short term -- often the body retains water. It attempts to maintain homeostasis by counteracting the stresses we put on it.

When you drink a lot of extra water - your body excretes more water to maintain balance.

When we weight train -- we actually break down muscle tissue. And the body responds by building new muscle. It attempts to maintain homeostasis by doing the reverse of the stimulus we placed on it.

When a male takes supplemental testosterone -- the body shuts down it's own production in a bid to maintain homeostasis.

When we immunize children against disease -- we actually inject them with a small dose of that disease. The immune system recognizes the vaccine as foreign, destroys it, and 'remembers' it. When the virulent version of an agent comes along, the immune system is thus prepared to respond. In order to prepare the body to defend against a disease - we expose it to the disease - and it responds by doing the opposite - it destroys the disease.

In almost every situation I can think of, the body tries to maintain homeostasis by "doing the opposite" of the stimulus.

Now we know that while you are doing it -- low intensity exercise burns primarily fat.

Higher intensity exercise actually burns more carb stores than fat.

But in every head to head comparison, high intensity exercise results in more fat loss than low intensity exercise - even though the more intense work may burn a lesser percentage of fat during the exercise session.

Burning glycogen results in a larger amount of fat lost than burning fat directly.

The body responds by "doing the opposite"...

Break down muscle to grow more muscle. Burn glycogen to lose more fat.

Rick Mayo

Club Mascot

I am normally a "big dog" person but I have made an exception. Laurie, our office manager, has a Pomeranian named Zoe that is sort of our club mascot. Another plus, if you remove her uniform, she makes a great little dusting tool.

Rick Mayo

Simple but not Easy

At our last monthly meeting I asked our entire team to tell everyone what they considered to be the single most important factor in determining success with their weight loss clients. Our team has a combined 113 years of real training experience, dealing mostly with adult fat reduction. It was a very interesting conversation and here are just a few tips from the team:

-Journal your food intake
-Do 3 days or more of weight training every week
-Practice portion control
-Eliminate sugar from your diet
-Drink only non-caloric drinks
-Intensity of exercise is more important than duration

Are these tips new to you? Are there any ancient Chinese secrets included? I didn't think so.

What did this meeting tell our team that we already knew. Fat loss is really simple! I would guess that there are very few if any people who don't know that exercise and healthy eating are the tickets to fat loss. Why then do we struggle with our weight and health? Because, though it is simple, it is certainly not easy!

We decided that our role in our clients' lives was really that of a facilitator. Most people who visit us on a regular basis know exactly what is expected of them in and out of the gym to maintain their fitness. Why then do they continue to seek the services of personal trainer? It's simple, they are smart and honest enough to admit that without the accountability of a plan and an exercise appointment, they will not be consistent.

Rick Mayo

No Pain No Gain?

Q. I used to be sore after nearly every workout. Lately, I have not been getting sore at all and I'm worried that I am not getting a good workout. Do I need to be sore to make progress?

A. First, know that you are not alone with your concerns. I often answer this exact question when clients progress beyond the beginning stages of their training program. The simple answer is NO, you do NOT need to be sore for a workout to be productive. Once your body adapts to the stimuli of strength training, you won't experience nearly the soreness that you did in the beginning. This adaptation is a good thing! Remember, adaptation to strength training means more muscle, faster RMR and etc.

Unfortunately, people do equate muscle soreness to hard work when it fact it has nothing do to with making progress. As strength coach, Charles Staley, once said,"I can hit someone with a baseball bat and make them sore, does this mean this is good too?" Some popular programs are hard just for the sake of being hard. Heck, I can do 500 body weight squats and be REALLY sore tomorrow morning but what is the point? The goal should not be to get sore for the sake of soreness, but to systematically improve your strength and conditioning.

Now, you may continue to experience muscle soreness from a change in intensity, volume, load and several other factors. This is normal and you should expect it periodically.

Make it a point to journal your progress. Note your measurements, weight lifted or fat loss. This way you can track your progress and make adjustments accordingly based on solid numbers and not whether or not your glutes are too sore to sit down the next day.

Rick Mayo

More on Chocolate Milk

If you follow college football, you know that Rich Rodriguez has taken over as head coach at the University of Michigan. Coach Rodriguez brought several new staff members including strength and conditioning coach, Mike Barwis. Coach Barwis has implemented an entirely different approach to Michigan's training program.

In a previous post, I presented chocolate milk as an ideal post-workout recovery drink. Coach Barwis agrees in an article for ESPN:

Barwis is equal parts old- and new-school. The old part: He believes in "Olympic movements," so his players perform a lot of power cleans and squats. Another old part: Don't tell the energy drink industry, but when his players finish their workout, he has them drink -- I kid you not -- chocolate milk.

Barwis is happy to explain how milk is the best delivery system for casein and whey, the proteins your body needs after a workout. The chocolate syrup replenishes glucose. But he also can explain it in a way that any former kindergartner can understand

Read the rest of the article here.

Rick Mayo

Nice car or nice butt?

If you had to choose between a shiny new car or a fit body, which would you choose? I will bet that most of you would choose the rockin body over the meaningless new auto 9 times out of 10. Where am I going with this? Good question!

Not long ago, someone in very poor health visited with me to discuss her fitness goals and learn more about personal training. I explained our philosophy and how we could help her reach her goals in the proposed time frame. She seemed a little hesitant to commit to the work involved in reaching her particular goals and eventually cited money as the reason for her not beginning an exercise program with us (we are appropriately if not slightly under priced for our area). She then proceeded to exit the facility and jump into her $100K automobile with the dealer tags still on the back!

I am certainly not going to tell people how they should spend their own hard-earned money, but seriously, I wonder about the sanity of some decisions. If historically you have never been able to stick with an exercise program and your health is suffering because of it, don't you think allocating just a few hundred dollars a month towards your fitness is worthwhile investment? Sure, it's easier to put a temporary patch on your depression by buying a new material item. Guess what? Things won't be any better next month or next year, if you are still around to ponder such things.

Sorry this sounds like a bit of a rant, but I really don't get it. There is no better investment than that of a fit/healthy mind, body and spirit. Everything else is just stuff. If you can't do it on your own, for goodness sake find a partner or pay someone to help you.

Rick Mayo

Alternatives to Olympic Lifting

There is no denying the strength and conditioning benefits of Olympic lifting. Our Olympic weight lifters are some of the most explosive athletes in the world (all but one of our mens' Olympic team can dunk a basketball from a flat-footed start). Also the clean and jerk and the snatch use nearly every muscle in your body, which make them great tools for conditioning.

The problem with these lifts is that they are very technical and can be difficult to teach to our average fitness clients. We also have to weigh the risk-to-benefit factor when considering adding Olympic lifts to our programs. If there are simpler ways to get similar affects, why waste clients' time teaching them the idiosyncrasies of complex lifts that traditional training can accomplish?

We have had great success combining traditional lifts with explosive exercises that mimic the same movement pattern. These exercises are performed back to back with little or no rest in between the movements. Here are a few examples:

A Bench press x 3
B Clapping push up x 5

A Squat x 5
B Jumping Squat x 5

A Vertical Press x 3
B Vertical med ball throw x 3

You can repeat this technique with nearly all compound exercises and produce similar affects to Olympic lifting with significantly less risk of injury or technique flaws.

Here is a video of UFC welter weight champion, George St. Pierre, training in this fashion.



Rick Mayo