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1.  The Bench Press: 
“How much can you bench?” seems to be the question that every gym rat would like to know when you tell them you workout. In my option, I think the bench press is the # 1 most overrated exercise that is performed in the gym (especially on Mondays/National Bench Press Day). The reason I think this way about the bench press is because I am a man of functionality and I believe that you should train movements and not body parts (the body building era is over!). The only time you are lying on your back and pushing something heavy off of you is when you are getting your ass kicked in a fight or in competition.

2.  Bicep curl:  
I absolutely hate this exercise! I will just quote Alwyn Crosgrove who is a well renowned strength & conditioning coach and an overall great guy. He states, “If you cannot achieve 10 pull-ups on your own, you have no right doing bicep curls”. I’ll just leave it at that because I can go on for days about why this exercise is irrelevant…

3.  Leg press:
Ok, let’s load up 8 plates on each side of the leg press and have people be AMAZED about how much weight you are pressing. Let’s see…
8 plates x 2 sides = 16 plates total
16 plates x 45 lbs = 720 lbs that you are pressing while you are reclining in a chair with your feet up. That is amazing! So if you can leg press 720 lbs…How much can you squat???
(I had a professor once told me that “leg press is only functional for truck drivers”)

4.  Seated Adductions: 
Women love this exercise!…They believe that if they do enough reps, the fat will melt off of their inner thighs. Not only is this not true, but this will cause a major muscle imbalance in the body especially in women. For example, the next time you see someone squat notice their knees and how they move (in or out). If the knees move in towards one another then that is a perfect example of someone who has tight adductors. Having tight adductors will lead to someone having weak glutes and not having a strong ass will lead to sprain ankles and knee problems.

5.  Tricep Kick Back:
This exercise is ridiculous because for you to perform this exercise you must pull your arm into shoulder extension and maintain an isometric muscle contraction (no movement) in your latissimus dorsi and posterior deltoid. In other words, you are not just working your triceps in this exercise because your motor neurons are firing to your lats and deltoids to hold you in the proper position. You won’t be able to overload the triceps with weight and thus you will not see any gains by doing that exercise…throw it out!

Honorable mention
• Forearm curls
• Crunches
• Knee extension                                                                                                                                                               

Got to love Mondays

uh???

 Northridge CA, 91325

Less Movement = More FAT

I have nothing to say…this picture tells all.

Northridge CA, 91325

While you’re working out or doing any type of physical activity, your body has to use substrates such as carbohydrates, fats, and protein to produce energy for your body to move and stay moving. After you are done with your workout, there is a 45 minute metabolic window in which you need to fuel your body with good carbohydrates, fats, and protein. The sooner you get a meal or meal replacement shake into your body after your activity, the better your body will progress in building lean muscle mass and replenish the substrates you have burned to produce energy for your body.

So what should you eat?

You want to eat something that involves simple carbohydrates, good fats, and lean proteins. This might include:

1. Meal replacement shakes or protein shakes that involve protein, fat, and most importantly carbs.
2. Chocolate milk is a really good post workout drink. It has simple carbohydrates (the chocolate) and the right amount of fats and protein in the milk
3. Turkey or chicken sandwich on white bread
4. A bowl of cereal
5. If you want to have a cheat day in which you want to pig out on whatever your stomach desires, the best time to eat it is after you workout within the 45 minute metabolic window.

 
Fueling your body with in the 45 minute metabolic window after your workout is crucial in enhancing your metabolism and spending up your desire goals in health and fitness. However if you are trying to lose weight, make sure that you are watching your calories so you can achieve a calorie deficit which will allow you to burn fat while keep building that lean muscle mass.

Northridge, CA 91325

The body it divided into three planes in which movements are performed. These planes consist of the sagittal plane, frontal plane, and transverse plane.

1. The sagittal plane divides the body into right and left halves and 80% of movements in the gym are performed in the sagittal plane. Exercises in the sagittal plane include bicep curls, squats, walking lunges, crunches, shoulder press, triceps extension, shoulder flexion/front raise, etc.
2. The frontal plane divides the body into front and back halves and is associated with adduction and abduction. However, there are not as many exercises that are performed in this plane. Exercises in the frontal plane consist of lateral lunges, hip abduction, hip adduction, and lateral shoulder raises….I think that’s all of them.
3. The transverse plane (my favorite) divides the body into top and bottom halves. Anytime you are rotating/twisting your body, you are performing movements in the transverse plane. Exercises performed in the transverse plane include cable chops, Russian twist, crossover crunch, transverse lunge, and any other movement that involves rotation.

 
The next time you exercise, it would be a good idea to incorporate more lateral movements in the frontal plane, as well as more rotational movements in the transverse plane. If you play a sport, it is crucial to focus on movements in the frontal and transverse planes. Even in everyday life, you are performing movements in all three planes and training movements rather than body parts will allow you to improve the way you move on and off the field. If you want to look like an athlete, you must train like an athlete so challenge the body in multiple planes!

Finish your workout by doing a “finisher”.  Take any multiple joint exercise (squats, push up, jumps, burpees ect.) or a combination of two multiple joint exercises and ladder down from 10 reps down to 1 rep.  After you finish the prescibed amount of reps, you get that amount of rest in seconds.  For example, after you have completed 10 push ups, you get 10 seconds to rest.  After 10 seconds of rest you should be doing 9 push up and after that, you get 9 seconds of rest and so on.  However, when you get to the reps of 5 – 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 …there is no rest in between those sets. 

Heres how it goes…

10 push ups 10 squat jumps…10 second rest

9 push ups 9 squat jumps…9 second rest

8 push ups 8 squat jumps…8 second rest

7 push ups 7 squat jumps…7 second rest

6 push ups 6 squat jumps…6 second rest

5 push ups 5 squat jumps…no rest

And then 4 – 3 – 2 -1 with no rest in between

Incorporate a finisher at the end of your workouts will benefit the “afterburn” effect/EPOC  (excessvie post oxygen consumption) witch will allow you to burn more calories hours after you have completed your workout.

There are 3500 calories in 1 pound of fat.  For someone to lose 1 pound a week, they would have to have a calorie deficit of 500 calories a day.  Maintaining this 500 calorie deficit a day for seven days will allow you to lose 1 lb in a week. 

500 cal/day x 7 days = 3500 (1 pound of fat)

The Pros:

1.      You resting metabolic rate (RMR):  The calories that your body will burn just to keep it functioning.

a.       Typical Male:  Burns 1200 – 1800 cal/day

b.      Typical Female:  Burns 1100 – 1300 cal/day

2.      Eat what you want:  Calories are calories but some foods have more calories than others.  If you eat a lot one day, you must workout just as hard the next day.

3.      You will be more active throughout the day because you will be conscious of maintaining a calorie deficit.  This means to “move more and eat less”

The Cons:

1.      Achieving a calorie deficit of 500 cal/day is very hard to achieve.  You must be more active throughout the day and also counting your calories.  1500 – 1800 calories a day is standard for losing weight.

2.      It is psychological demanding!  You must be mentally tough because you must count calories, weigh, and measure your food every single day.  Staying motivated will be very hard because you might not lose that 1 lb in the week.

3.      You will have low levels of energy because calories = energy.  Maintaining a constant calorie deficit will be physically demanding.

To tell you the truth, the reason why so many people are overweight and not losing the weight that they want is because people do not move enough.  You don’t have to spend two hours a day at the gym.  You must live an “Active Lifestyle” …this means you must walk to the store, wash your own car, clean your house, stand don’t sit, join a basketball or softball league…pretty much don’t be lazy.

Checkout the obesity rates in America from 1985 – 2007

http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/index.htm

The single most important aspect in your workout should be intensity. The reason why people do not see results with their workout is because it is easy and comfortable to them. I love the people who do an exercise and after their set, they rest for 3 minutes looking up into space or talk to their gym friend. A professor at my school told me that, “if you are in the gym for more than an hour, you are making more friends than you are making muscles.”

The best tip to intensify your workout is to stop resting in between sets. There are a couple ways to do this.
1. Superset: Take two exercises and perform them back to back until you achieve the amount of sets you strive for. My favorite is the deadlift – pull up combo. After I do a set up deadlifts, I jump right into doing pull ups. After I’m done with pull up, I go right back into doing deadlift and so on.
2. Active rest: Let’s say you just finished a set of heavy squats, the worst thing you can do is just stand there. Proceed to do some crunches or something less demanding on the body but you are keeping your heart rate up.
3. Time your rest: After you are done with your set, hit your stop watch and rest for 30 seconds. When those 30 seconds are up, go back into doing the exercise. As the weights get heavier, you can take longer rest periods to allow your muscles to recover.
4. Tabatas: Take a multiple joint exercise like a squat and do 8 sets of 20 second squats as fast as you can and then rest for 10 seconds.  A Tabata only takes 4 minutes to complete but, it will be the hardest 4 minutes you will ever experience if you do it correctly.
5. Heart Rate: Is the single best indicator to measure intensity. You can purchase a heart rate monitor or you can simply check it by placing two fingers on your carotid artery (neck) and see how many beats per minute your heart is generating.

High intense workouts will allow you to burn more fat, increase lean muscle mass, and increase cardiovascular endurance in half the time it used to take.  The harder you push yourself…the faster you will achieve your goals.

I get people coming up to me all the time and asking me the same old question…”How do I lose this?”  Most, if not all of the time they are referring to their abdomen region that is hanging over their gym shorts.  These people are crunching their asses off thinking that the muscle they are building in their trunk region is going to magically shed off all that fat and they will wake up the next morning with “ripped abs”.  Sorry, but that is never going to happen!

So what is the answer to that ridiculous question that people ask me all the time?…”Stop doing so many crunches.”  The last thing that people should do if they want to slim down their mid sections is to do crunches.  Building muscle does not eliminate fat.  Building muscle increases your resting metabolic rate (RMR) so you can burn more calories throughout the day.  However, some muscles on your body are bigger than others and they build bigger and better than others.

For example, your chest, back, and legs are the biggest and most powerful muscles in your body.  If you want to trim down, I suggest that you stop doing seated preacher curls, tricep kick backs, and calf raises.  Focus on movement that involve multiple joints like squats, pull ups, and push ups.  Once you have build some muscle in your chest, back, and legs then you can focus on your abs.