Your Fitness

 We put a lot of thought and effort into our three main meals of the day but we rarely give much thought to maybe what is the second most important meal of the day:  your post workout meal.

If you have just finished an exhausting workout, you have depleted your body of  glycogen, amino acids, nutrients and oxygen.  You body is in a state of what is called catabolism.  In this state you body is breaking down muscle and tissue.  You need to reverse this.  You want to put yourself in a state of muscle and tissue repair.  And you need to do this rather quickly, within the 30 - 45 minutes.  You must give you body what it is craving.

So what is the best thing that you can give to your body at this point?  I would start with carbohydrates, not complex carbohydrates but rather simple ones.  You wants foods that can be quickly digested so that your glycogen levels with begin to restore to their previous levels.  Something like Gatorade (or another sport drink) will do the trick or you can eat a piece of fruit.

But carbohydrates are not the only thing your body is needing.  You muscles have been beaten and damaged and need some protein to help build them back up.   Again you want a food that will be quickly digested.  So I would suggest that you use a Whey Protein supplement.  Whey protein is easier to digest than other protein types.  If you don’t want to spend the money on protein supplements then I would suggest a few glasses of chocolate milk.  Milk is always a great protein source.

Strive for a ratio of 2 grams of carbohydrates for every 1 gram of protein.  You can adjust the size of what you eat according to your particular calorie intake.

By the way, stay away from fat in this meal.  Although you need fat in your diet you don’t need it in you post workout meal. Fat will slow the rate at which the nutrients get into your system.

So make sure you spend some time thinking out your post workout meal.  It is essential to your progress in achieving your goal of overall fitness.

 So you want to burn fat?  Join the club.   With obesity levels in the U.S. pushing nearly 1 in 3 people it is on the mind of just about everyone.   If you want to get serious about your fitness and burning off the unwanted fat then you need to look into what is called High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).

HIIT is short periods (intervals) of intense exercise followed by a resting period where less intense exercise is performed.  The question you may be asking is why is High Intensity Interval Training supposed to be so effective?  What makes it better than steady state cardio workouts?

You are probably familiar with steady state cardio.  That means hopping on the treadmill and jogging for about 30 minutes or so.  You try to get your heart rate into the fat burning zone and hopefully the fat will melt away.  When you get your heart rate into the fat burning zone (about 65 - 75% of your max heart rate) you will be burning fat at a good clip.  You will be getting most of your energy from your fat.  This is good.  You definitely will burn fat and lose weight by doing steady state cardio.  However, there is also a downside.

Outside of being boring, you will only burn calories while doing the exercise itself and maybe for another hour or so after that.  Maybe that doesn’t sound so bad but you will see in a moment that it is definitely not preferrable.

Your body will also adapt to your workouts at some point making them much less effective (that means you won’t burn much fat).  The other problem is that if you perform steady state cardio for too long you lose muscle mass.  Think about it; have you ever seen a muscular marathon runner?  There is a reason for that.  After about 35-40 minutes of  steady state cardio you begin to release a hormone called cortisol.  Unfortunately, cortisol will break down the protein in your body for energy instead of fat.   Less protein means less muscle.  Not enough protein means muscle loss.

So what does HIIT offer that steady state cardio doesn’t?  Research has shown that interval training will increase your ability to burn calories at an elevated rate for up to 48 hours after you workout.  This is a result of Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC).  You can click the link to learn more about why it works that way rather than go into a big discussion about it here.

One of the other positive side effects of High Intensity Interval Training is that it causes your body to release testosterone and human growth hormone.  Both of these are essential in building muscle and helping you to lose fat.  HIIT by its very nature cannot be done for long periods of time therefore cortisol never gets released.  A typical HIIT workout will only last about 20 - 25 minutes.

The other positive part about HIIT is that you body never quite adapts to it.  You can vary the interval times of intesity and rest and keep your body off balance.

So if you are at a fat loss plateau or need to ramp up your fat loss efforts then take a look at High Intensity Interval Training.

 Should you use a training partner?  I think the obvious answer to that question is yes but with a major condition on the “yes.”  Your training partner must be dedicated to your fitness success.  If you get stuck with a bad training partner then your progress will be severely limited.  With that in mind here are a few things that you can look for in a training partner.

1.  They must near your fitness level.  No matter what you are doing whether it is cardio or whether it is strength training they must be close to your level of fitness.  If you are going for a 5 mile run and they can only do 1 mile before collapsing to the ground they will not make for a good training partner.  If your strength levels are much different you will lose too much time between sets switching weights back and forth rather than keeping a good pace to your workout.

2.  Find someone who is passionate about working out.  If you are ready to go everyday and excited to see what you can accomplish each day but you pair yourself up with someone who is constantly dragging through the workout and is wishing he/she was somewhere else it is going to effect you. Find a training partner who matches your passion for fitness.

3.  Stay away from chatty training partners.  Remember you are there to get work done.  You can talk when your workout is over.  I am not saying that you can’t speak at all but I have seen training partners that have a love for telling stories and the other person feels sort of obligated to listen rather than train.   Talk all you want but when it is time to do your next exercise or set you want a training partner that will shut up and let you work.

4.  You only need one training partner.  Anything more than one training partner is counterproductive is you are in the weight room.  If you are just getting together for a run or to do some interval training then it is OK to have more than one.  However, in a weight room having more than one training partner will slow down your workout too much.

5.  Make sure you pick a training partner who values their time.  Their is nothing worse than agreeing that you will meet at the gym at 7 PM only to have them drag themselves in to the gym at 7:30 PM.  Make sure you find a partner who is punctual and who respects your time.

6.  Make sure you pick a training partner with whom you don’t have a personality conflict.  Some people are nice but too much of them can wear on you.  I take the train in to work with a guy who is quite nice and personable, however, I could never workout with him.  He is constantly talking about his injuries and an incessant complainer.  I can take this for the few minutes that I see him on the train but if I had to put up with it for an entire workout I would sooner or later look for an excuse not to go.  Find a training partner that you enjoy and who will motivate you to show up.

These are just a few of the things that you want to look for in a training partner.  When you pick one right it can be a big plus to your workouts.  A good training partner can provide motivation, friendship,  and , of course,  safety (spotting).  So pick your partner wisely.

Everyone should be doing weight training but I find that so many people are avoiding it.  I hear a
tremendous number of misguided excuses for not doing so.

Here are a few of them.

Weight training is too difficult on my joints.

If you are doing weight training correctly it should not be difficult on your joints.  In fact lifting weights will help strengthen your joints.  If when you are beginning you have some still joints then lower the amount of weight that you are lifting.  Don’t quit altogether.

I don’t want to get bulked up or muscle bound.  

This is often a concern of women.  Trust me you will not get bulked up unless you want to and even if you want to it is difficult to achieve.  What weight lifting will add is tone and muscularity.  You will not develop rippling biceps, big chest, big legs and shoulders overnight.  Many who have been trying to achieve this and have worked very hard to do so still can’t reach their goals.  Most women do not even have the genetics to get large muscles no matter how hard they try.

I have heard that muscle turns to fat if you stop lifting weights.

Whoever told you this lie needs to go back and repeat their high school biology class.  Muscle tissue cannot convert to fat cells.  It is biologically impossible.  Muscle will merely atrophy (get smaller) without use.  It cannot become fat.  What can happen however, is that the less muscle you have the fatter you can become.  You will burn more calories to maintain muscle.  Therefore the less muscle you have the fewer calories that you will burn.

I am too old to lift weights.

This is another falsehood.  You can benefit from lifting weights at any age and research has shown the
ability to increase muscle mass and strength no matter what the age.

Weight lifting takes too long.  

If you do it correctly your weight lifting session should not last any more that 20 - 25 minutes.  That is, unless you are walking around talking too much or taking long breaks in between sets.  If this is happening then you need to change how you workout.  Exercise first, socialize later.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of weight lifting.

You will build muscle strength.  

Not only will you build muscle strength but you will also build tendon and ligament strength.  This is
beneficial to your joints and will help prevent injury to these joints in the future.  And of course
we all would like to be a little stronger.

You will improve your appearance.

A toned, muscular body looks better than one that has no tone.  You will have more confidence to wear the
swimwear of your choice and will in general feel better about yourself.  Just don’t let others catch you
standing in front of a mirror and admiring yourself.

You will burn fat faster.

Weight lifting will fire up your metabolism.  As I mentioned earlier it requires more energy to maintain
muscle.  This means that the more muscle you have the more calories you will burn on an everyday basis.  The mere presence of muscle will do battle with your fat.

I could go on but I think you get the picture.  Everyone needs to be lifting weights.  So what are you
waiting for.  Get off the computer and head to the gym!

A few years ago I first heard about Crossfit.   I ran across their website during a lunch hour at work and immediately was taken in by what they had to say.

CrossFit has gone on to become the preferable strength and conditioning program for military special ops groups (Navy Seals, Army Rangers, etc), as well as, police and fire departments, marital artists, MMA fighters, professional athletes and people just like you and me.

The CrossFit program is scalable so no matter what your level of fitness you can begin doing CrossFit workouts.  If you are an elderly individual or a supremely conditioned MMA fighter you can benefit from a CrossFit workout.

What I fell in love with was that they had a different opinion of what real fitness was all about. Most of us have imbalanced views of what fitness is. If you have a running background, you might think that being fit means you have the ability to run 10 miles at a 5 - 6 minute pace for each mile.

If you are a weightlifter you might believe that being fit means that you can bench press in excess of 400 pounds, squat nearly 600 pounds and deadlift about 500 pounds.

If you are a bodybuilder you might believe that being fit is easy to determine. If you have large muscles and rippling abs, then you have arrived.

The point is that we have a tendency to define fitness by the standard defined by the fitness area that we gravitate towards the most. Although, all of the above things are positive and beneficial they don’t necessarily define fitness. What good is it if you can run 10 miles but struggle carrying two gallons of milk in from the store?

It is nice to be able to lift heavy weights but if you are tired after walking a couple of flights of stairs then I would venture to say that your overall fitness level is not too great.

Crossfit looked at this problem and developed a workout protocol that attempts to build proficiency in all areas of fitness. They focus on endurance, strength, and flexibility. They incorporate running, body weight exercise, olympic lifts, kettlebell training, medicine ball training, etc.

The nice thing about CrossFit is that they post WOD (workouts of the day) each day at their site.  These workouts are designed to prevent your body from adapting to your exercise routine and to provide you with the avenue to increase in strength, endurance, flexibility and even confidence.

If you haven’t checked them out swing by their website and give it a once over.  You will be glad you did.

I have become a real fan of Body Weight Exercise over the last couple of years.  It is probably as a result of a variety of factors.  The first is that I came across an alternate definition of fitness from  Crossfit workouts.  Crossfit is not exclusively a body weight exercise protocol but they incorporate many body weight exercises in their workouts. They include a number of Olympic lifts, running, gymnastics, and kettlebells as well.  I will do a post of Crossfit shortly for those of you who are not familiar with them.

The second thing that influenced me was a program called Turbulence Training by Craig Ballantyne. Craig has been a contributing author for Men’s Health for years and developed Turbulence Training. I began performing a few of his workouts without much in the way of expectation and was pleasantly surprised at the workout that it gave me.  It worked my muscles to a great level and elevated my heart rate.

I hate running. I understand that value that it may have in the overall scheme of your fitness but if I could find a replacement for it and still accomplish the same level of fat burning I would never run again.  As I have gotten older now (44) my joints like running even less than I do. So body weight exercises were a heaven sent gift.  A 20 - 30 minute body weight exercise routine builds muscle and burns fat at the same time.  This is quite the powerful combo.

In the future I will post some body weight exercise routines.  You will find these quite challenging and difficult.  You will be amazed at the results and thrilled at the amount of fat that is being burned.  So stay tuned as we explore the benefits of body weight exercise for your fitness.

 One of the things that you need to become familiar with as you start your journey toward fitness is Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). What is basal metabolic rate? Well to put it simply, basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the calories that you burn each day by existing.

You should know what you BMR is so that you can be aware of what is an appropriate intake of food and how many extra calories you will need to burn to reach a weight goal or merely to maintain your weight where it is at.  So let’s give a quick overview of BMR.

BMR is different for each individual. Your body burns calories all day long even if you don’t think it is happening after you step on the scale. You burn calories when you body tries to maintain the muscle it has;  you burn calories when your body maintains your body temperature and you burn calories when your body performs basic daily functions such as pumping blood, breathing, etc.

Your basal metabolic rate is determined by many different factors. Here are a few:

Gender - Males have a higher BMR that women (sorry ladies). This is basically because men have a higher percentage of muscle mass and in general they weigh more.

Age - Yes, I am sure that it is no surprise to you that your BMR declines with age (I know that some of us feel as if our BMR has fallen off of a cliff).   All you need to do is look at your belly or thighs to know this is the case.

Weight - The more you weigh the higher your BMR.  In essence, the more weight you are lugging around the more calories you will burn doing it.

Muscle - The more muscle you have the higher your BMR. It takes more calories to maintain a pound of muscle than it does to maintain a pound of fat.

Genetics - Some people are just blessed. I work next to a guy who can’t gain weight if he tries and he is 50. This is not my problem.  Many would love to have this problem. Some have higher metabolisms than others and will burn calories at a faster rate.

Diet - This is one of the biggest mistakes that people make when trying to lose weight. If you starve yourself or otherwise deprive your body of calories you will cause your basal metabolic rate to drop. Sometimes you can cause it to drop by as much as 10% - 20%. Starvation is not a way to lose weight.

Body Temperature - If you have a fever you will burn more calories than you would if you body temperature is normal. This is one of the reasons that you may lose weight when sick (even though you don’t get out of bed).  You may also lose weight due to other reasons as well that are not to comfortable.

Activity Level - The more you exercise the higher your BMR.  Not only do you burn calories from the exercise but you also raise your BMR causing you to burn more calories even while at rest.

How to Calculate Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

In order to calculate your BMR you need to figure out how many calories you burn during the day. This would include your maintenance level (calories burned by laying in bed) and your activity level. The more active you are the more you would add to your maintenance level.

The maintenance level for the average woman would be between 1800 and 2100 calories and for the average man it would be between 2500 and 2800. Some individuals due to their activity level require much more. If you remember that during the Olympics a report came out that Michael Phelps needed to consume about 10,000 calories a day just not to lose weight.

Here is a basic equation for calculating your BMR.

Women:
655 + (4.3 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)

Men:
66 + (6.3 x weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)

I am a 44 year old man who is 5′ 9″ and 180 pounds. So my calculation would be as follows:

66 + (6.3 x 180) + (12.9 x 69) - (6.8 x 44) = 1791

This gets just your resting BMR. Now you have to calculate your activity level. To do this you can use the following rule of thumb.

If you are sedentary : BMR x 20 percent

If you are lightly active: BMR x 30 percent

If you are moderately active (You exercise most days a week.): BMR x 40 percent

If you are very active (You exercise intensely on a daily basis or for prolonged periods.): BMR x 50 percent

I am moderately active so I would take 1791 and multiply it by 1.4 to get my BMR. So each day I burn on average a little more than 2500 calories. If I wanted to lose weight I would have to figure out how to keep my caloric intake underneath of that level.

I hope this was helpful to you. If you don’t want to take the time to calculate your own BMR you can find calculators all over the internet.

Often we allow ourselves to get boxed in when it comes to maintaining our fitness level.  We compartmentalize our fitness.  If we want to burn calories and lose weight we do cardio.  We hop on a treadmill or a bike or an elliptical machine or if we are really daring we don our running shoes and head outside.

If we want to increase strength or better our muscular tone we do resistance training or strength training or weight lifting.  But for whatever reason we rarely think about trying to accomplish both with the same exercise routine.  It is one of my goals to challenge your thinking in this regard.  You see we can burn calories, lose weight, build muscle tone and build strength quite often through the same set of exercises.

Today I want to discuss an exercise that fits into this category.  It will both give you a great cardio workout and help build muscle tone all at the same time.  Now I don’t recommend doing this exercise non-stop for 30 minutes for a couple of reasons.  First, you won’t be able to perform it for that long and second, any exercise performed for 30 minutes straight is boring.  That is one of the reasons I despise running.  It is boring.  And the ultimate upshot is if I consider it boring then there is a good chance that I just might decide to skip it today.  This is not good for developing your fitness level.

The exercise I want to introduce to you today is Burpees.  Burpees are a multi-function exercise.  They are a body weight exercise that  includes a squat, a push-up and an explosive jump.  These parts combine to create a lethal fat burning exercise.   (It is lethal to your fat, not you.)

Let me describe how to perform a burpee.  You will start out in a standing position with your feet about shoulder width apart.  The first part of the move is that you will squat down.  Then you will quickly place your hands on the floor in front of you and will simultaneously quick your feet back so that you are in a push-up position.  You will then kick your feet back to where they started from (removing your hands from the floor) and from the squatting position explode and jump as high as you can.  Then repeat and repeat and repeat.

The idea is that the exercise be done in a flowing motion without breaks in between each part.  If you are having trouble with understanding my explanation then I have found a video from YouTube for you to watch.  The video is from the wonderful people at Crossfit .  They even throw a little ring exercise variation in for you at the end.

Burpees are intensive exercises.  Try to work your way up to where you can perform 20 - 25 without stopping and work them into your overall exercise routine.  You can add 3 or 4 sets to your fat burning workout and I believe you will be pleased with the result.

So get to exercising and let me know what you think of burpees if you have never done them before.  See you soon!

Welcome to Your Fitness blog!  I am glad that you took time out of your day to stop by.  I hope that you will bookmark this blog and check back often for the content that you will find within.

I believe fitness should be an essential part of each person’s life.  It is too important for it not to be so.  We have rampant obesity here in the U.S.   I recently saw a report that put the percentage of overweight individuals in the U.S. at 64%.  What was even more disturbing was that the same report showed that 1 in 4 individuals were considered obese.   I have to admit that this is not surprising.  I take the train into downtown Chicago on most days and I might even place the percentage even higher.  But then again maybe people in Chicago are fatter than most.  We have to protect against the cold.

The problem with the obesity is that it begins to take a toll on the health care system not to mention the self image of the individuals who are struggling with weight.

I will cover topics here that range from fat loss to body weight exercise to weight lifting to cardio to anything else that will apply to helping you become a fitter individual.  We will talk about diets and nutrition when necessary and will help point you in a direction that will help you achieve your fitness related goals.

Thanks again for stopping by.  I hope to see you here again soon.