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Trainer's Blog
Follow my blog for a constant stream of great fitness tips and information.
Follow my blog for a constant stream of great fitness tips and information.
Sun Tzu, legendary Chinese General and author of The Art of War, wrote, “To win wars, you must know yourself and your enemy. If you don’t know one or either, expect to lose.” In the battle of the bulge, you are the aggressor and fat is the enemy. If you are to beat this enemy, you must first understand it AND yourself. At FastTwitch, we help you learn to understand and consequently control both.
The biggest and most common mistakes I see people making in the gym every day are the following: 1) They depend too much on will power and 2) they train without first learning and/or knowing how to train safely and effectively. At FastTwitch, we have a simple belief – Will power is crap. Don’t believe me? Are you a millionaire? Are you built like a Greek god? No? How’s that will power thing workin out for ya? It’s not, is it? Systems lessen the need for will power by providing a set of rules that are clear and simple to follow. Follow the rules, you succeed. Fail to follow the rules, you fail. Simple as that. This form of governing one’s self via systems developed by people that are more experienced and know better and/or more than you do is the reason the Bible and the US Constitution are, have been and always will be so incredibly effective and popular. At FastTwitch, we’re simply doing our best to follow good examples…
If you’re like 95% of the people that approach...
Weightlifting is about longevity and quality of life. Looking good in a bathing suit is just a bonus.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a movement in America to discourage people from lifting heavy weights, or any weights at all. Doctors prescribe cardio for people who need more physical activity, diet books consider cardio the only form of exercise that exists, and TV shows like ‘The Biggest Loser’ strongly promote, you guessed it, cardio and more cardio. So where’s the weightlifting in all this? I’ll tell you, it’s not there because none of these so-called health experts know a thing about it.
Do you think Jillian Micheals (the “star” trainer of ‘The Biggest Loser’) has a good body? If you said yes, then I agree with you, she has succeeded in attaining what many consider a “good” physique. Is it great? No, I see flaws. For one she doesn’t really have any muscle mass, she’s just thin (the other picture is of a woman who does serious weight lifting, you’ll notice she exhibits more definition and overall “tone” than Jillian). Now, I have the eye of a personal trainer and physique specialist, so I’m going to be more critical than the average person. But, if you could, wouldn’t you rather be ‘great’? (By the way, Jillian isn't a real personal trainer, she's an actor)
If, on the other hand, you do...
There are many misconceptions regarding weightlifting. There are those who believe that it is not necessary since the invention of Zumba-whose slogan is “Ditch the workout, join the party!” Great, if it’s a party why don’t we drink beer while we’re at it! But I digress. I would like to clear up some of these misunderstandings and hopefully make you see how absolutely essential weight-lifting is for looking good and feeling good.
Misconception #1: Weight-lifting will make you big and bulky. I’ve heard this one many times, especially from women, but even from a few men. They think that lifting weights will automatically make their muscles swell up like balloons all over their body and that they’ll look thick because of it. Well, the truth is that only fat will make you look thick, added muscle acquired through weightlifting can only make you look leaner. I’m going to guess that people who are having near-seizures every time they do a Zumba workout are doing so because they want to be leaner. Now, I didn’t say ‘thinner’, I used the word ‘leaner’ for a reason. Most people who want to improve their overall body composition (look better in a bathing suit) usually want to be lean, which is the state of having a low level of body fat, where your muscularity shows through very clearly. Brad Pitt was lean in Fight Club, not thin, and he even looked...
Ever wonder what’s in all those protein shakes you keep drinking as meal replacements and post-workout meals? You’re probably saying, “Protein - duh!” You’re probably right. There likely is some protein in those shakes - though there’s no way to know for sure. Know who regulates and oversees the supplement industry? The supplement industry, that’s who. Surprisingly enough, the supplement industry only answers to the FDA after it screws up. Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself: fda.gov/food/dietarysupplements.
Long story short, you could be ingesting chalk. Chocolate/strawberry/vanilla/cookies-n-cream flavored chalk… but chalk all the same. Will ingesting chalk hurt or kill you? I don’t know. Damn sure won’t help your lean mass gains. That I do know. Know what else I'm pretty sure of? If it comes out of or from an animal and hasn’t been tampered with in a lab, it has protein in it. Not only does it have protein in it, it probably has a complete and very absorbable form of protein in it. Not only that but it probably has other stuff you need in it as well.
Rather than sucking down your usual laboratory born tub of I-don’t-know-what, try something that you know will have a significant amount of complete protein, vitamins, minerals, fluids for rehydration and just the right kind and amount of carbs you need after a workout – chocolate milk. Still think I'm full of it?...
The old timers had it all figured out, and I don’t mean Arnold Schwartzenegger, I mean Eugene Sandow, the very first weight lifter (after the Romans of course, but nobody has been able to find the stone tablets that held records of their workouts). The philosophy was simple, lift weight off the ground and put it overhead. It was simple, but not easy, which is perhaps why people stopped doing it and instead switched to using weight-lifting machines. Who can blame them? Machines are comfy, padded, require little exertion except for the specific muscle you’re targeting, and afterwards you feel like you’ve had a productive workout. Well, you haven’t had a productive workout (in my opinion anyway), but that’s another subject entirely.
The original weightlifters from the 1800’s and before didn’t have fancy gyms or nice equipment to help them build their bodies, they just had primitive barbells and dumbbells (the Romans just had stones!), and not even benches to bench press off of! And guess what, they were extremely strong human beings and their bodies showed it. They couldn’t do regular bench pressing but knew the chest was worked by horizontal pushing, so they did it on the ground, what we today call Floor Presses. They didn’t have squat racks that held a bar in mid-air for them so they could position the bar on their backs before doing heavy squats, they didn’t...
