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It’s always about the bigger picture. How to lose ugly fat
Posted by: | CommentsYou know I still get asked a ton of questions about how I lost body fat and that sort of thing. Yeah I also still get accused of being on the juice but that is just the annoyingness of wannabes that will never be because they aren’t willing to put the work in.
One thing I get asked about a lot was my diet during my 12 week transformation. The last person who asked me that I answered with a simple “brown rice and chicken”. Boring yes, but hey it worked. His follow up was “how did you cook it? fried, boiled, what?”
Can you see a problem with this level of thinking? Well let me fill you in. He is looking at such minute details that he is losing sight of the bigger picture (well the whole thinking I got ripped by eating fried chicken is ridiculous but that is another post for another time.).
get ripped by eating this? right
Now I don’t mind answering real questions with real answers but the fact of the matter is what I did then and what I would do now if I needed to are different things. That whole 12 week program did what it was intended to do which was get me ripped but knowing what I know now I would have taken a lot out. First it would be just kettlebells because as cool as it is flipping a tire it isn’t all that convenient. The point was the bigger picture. Diet (not fried chicken thank you very much) and exercise (all of that stuff I did that physically exerted myself back then).
Whoa diet and exercise done consistently over time actually works…who would have thunk it?
Now if you have the bigger picture filled out you can start to fill in the little details here and there to enhance the effect. If you know anything about painting then you might know that they start out with a basic shape of how everything is going to look and then fill in the little things here and there that separate it from looking like something you would throw away if it wasn’t your own kid into making it a masterpiece that Michealangelo would have been proud of. Filling in the little details of a nutrition and training program can make the process A LOT more efficient as well.
I see people huffing and puffing on a treadmill in the “judgement free zone” and then they go slather a ton of butter on the bagel. They aren’t looking at the bigger picture and aren’t going to get any kind of results. I see others that could be on a decent diet but then go onto an exercise bike and read a magazine while their legs go a whopping 4 revolutions a minute. Just pack up and go home because right now you are wasting your time. If they applied the best of both worlds, well you can figure out they would stop standing still in their fat loss attempts.
You probably heard me talking a lot about Geoff Neupert’s Kettlebell Burn program. Well that’s because it is the bigger picture with the details filled in that make it a masterpiece. I have yet to see a program that generates faster results for fat loss and it does it in only 3 training days a week.
And when you hear me talk about efficiency, the training sessions on those days are under an hour. It sort of cracks me up that people can train in as little time as that and still burn between 2 and 6lbs a week while others will spend almost a week’s worth of time each time they step into a gym. How can you waste precious time on crappy programs when awesome ones are out there? I’ll never understand it.
Now if you want to drop a lot of body fat very quickly and efficiently, Geoff just emailed me and told me he is offering a 25% discount for today through this special link only (I actually just emailed him to ask him if I could put this up on my blog, and lucky for you he said “yes”.) Hurry though because that 25% off stuff ends on Thursday.
I started this blog with the intention of teaching you as I learn better ways to do things. I had created a system but scrapped it for his simply because it was a better way of doing things. This blog hasn’t lost sight of the bigger picture.
Find the best way of doing something that leads to your goal and do it. Pick the masterpieces over the sketches and you’ll be a lot happier with your results. It can be as simple as that.
14 Fitness Fallacies
Posted by: | CommentsYou know I have to combat these fallacies, myths, lies, whatever you want to call them on a near daily basis. The fact of the matter is even so called “experts” in the fitness industry are often times more confused than the vampires of Twilight. Here are just a handful of them in whatever order I think them up in. Dispute me if you want to.
1) Walking burns more fat then running. This boils down the that annoying fat burning zone I keep hearing people talking about. Yeah a higher percentage of calories is burned from fat but it’s a higher percentage of a smaller number.
2) Running is great for fat loss. Only for a period of time. The fact of the matter is your body adapts to every thing you do to become better at it. In the case of running it adapts by becoming more efficient at it and using less energy (calories) to do so.
3) High reps for toning/Low reps for building. Sorry but when you go into higher reps you inflate your muscles with sarcoplasmic goo. That gives the muscles a bit of a bloated appearance and leads to size gains the fastest and strength gains the slowest. Low reps done with heavy weight lead to myofibrillar hypertrophy which takes much longer to build but is much stronger.
4) Squatting below parallel is bad for you knees. No it isn’t. Joints just like everything else need to be strengthened as well. I used to fall for the not squatting deep myth and had only aching knees to show for it. I can pistol squat ass to ankle with 48kgs (106lbs) now and my knees never felt better (including one that had an acl reconstruction years ago). My ego feels pretty good too.
5) Don’t lock out your elbows or knees. See above.
6) You have to confuse a muscle to make it grow. If you are constantly trying to confuse your muscles, guess what you get…stupid muscles. Would you feel good going into court if your lawyer was confused? Seriously though…when is confusion ever a good thing? Think about that one a sec.
7) Chicks dig giant muscles. No they don’t…well most of them. Go ask John Barban who wrote the Adonis Effect. They have a bunch of studies that blow this one out of the water. Girls don’t normally like it when a guy’s boobs are bigger then theirs.
nice....wait a second
8 ) You have to isolate muscles. Sorry but it isn’t really physically possible with the exception of having an extreme amount of muscle control which takes a lot of practice. I have only known one person in my life that could isolate individual muscles and that was because he was able to concentrate extremely well at it. When he uses his muscles as a team he rips chains apart with his hands. When he isolates he concentrates really hard…he doesn’t fool himself into thinking he’s isolating by only going part way up on a crunch.
9) You can spot reduce. Go to any gym or turn on tv late at night and see different people and gadgets trying to burn the fat off of their abs by doing ab exercises. As if the body works that way.
10) You can’t spot reduce. What’s this? I just contradicted myself? The fact of the matter is you can spot reduce but it is in such minuscule quantities that it isn’t worth doing.
11) Machines before free weights for beginners. Machines under train the stabilizing muscles. The stabilizing muscles are what keep your primary mover muscles safe when under a lot of pressure. This is why we do turkish getups before pressing.
12) Pulling your navel (belly button) in supports the spine. Uhm…how? Inflate your stomach and tense the abs when moving a lot of weight and try it the other way and tell me how supported you feel.
Think it would be safe for Captain Kirk to pull his navel in to support his spine when he has 1000lbs on his back?
13) Holding your breath during lifting is bad. Nope. It makes you stronger and has actually been shown to prevent stroke. Having said that having a bad heart or blood pressure it can be dangerous. Ask a qualified doctor before giving it a try.
14) A muscle needs at least 36 hours to recover. Only if you crush it every time you train. Train well below failure daily and give it a month or two and watch how much stronger you become. This crushing it and recovering started right around the same time steroids became popular in gyms. Coincidence? I doubt it.
So there you go…14 fitness fallacies. These were either created, taken out of context and taken as gospel or just born from clever marketing. Next time someone says something don’t take it as gospel, check to see if it is phallic in nature or if it actually makes sense and can be backed up.
Eric Moss out
Building habits to promote behaviors
Posted by: | CommentsSo the other day I was watching some good old fashioned mixed martial arts with my fiance in our home after dinner. The dishes were left in the sink so that I could wash them after the fights which I had waited all week to see. My fiance is starting to get a little more into the fights but I guess this night was too much for her and she said to me “If I skip the main event I’ll just wash the dishes so you don’t have to.” Normally I would have jumped at the chance because I absolutely hate washing dishes. I don’t know what it is but when spaghetti is at the bottom of the sink it’s really gross even just to touch.
The thing is I told her to stay and watch the fights with me. I really dread washing dishes but I know that if I start breaking the cycle then that would start a whirlwind that would leave our house a mess all the time. I know the importance of starting good habits and just sticking to them.
Beer isn't exactly the right habit to build but you know what I mean.
On the other hand I had put swings and turkish getups on my fiance’s “to do” list. I am going to do that 5 days a week. I am doing this to imprint good habits with her because I know she has the same kind of traps as me. If she drops off she will literally have no fitness program and it isn’t in her system yet to train consistently. With me being on her case if it happens like I plan it she will get addicted to the stimulus of training and learn the thrill that comes with physical strength. Like I said we are building good habits. Me to clean up everything right after I use it so the mess doesn’t accumulate and her to make fitness a part of her lifestyle.
So what can you learn from this? Do whatever habit you are trying to build every day until it is a part of you. Habits create lasting progress.
Rom fast exercise…uh thing. Are you kidding me?
Posted by: | CommentsYou know every once in awhile you come along something revolutionary, something extraordinary and something that makes you question everything you know or thought you knew. This isn’t that something.
4 minute exerciser
Now maybe this thing provides a heck of a workout but I will probably never know. Curiosity will not over power my stinginess to subtract 15 grand (yeah you heard me) from my bank account in order to try it out. This thing promises to provide a world class workout in as little as 4 minutes including the muscles that push pull and squat. Perhaps it does but like I said at a hefty price tag of 15 thousand big ones, I’ll never know.
But I do have some questions.
What about “core stability”?
What if your sport requires you to go longer then 4 minutes?
Is this 1 size fits all? If yes that means that an NFL player should leave Defranco’s gym will be able to use it and a sedentary woman will be able to leave Curves for this?
No supervision required? Idiot proof?
And here is a simple observation. One of the selling points is that it only takes 4 minutes which makes it easy to fit into a busy schedule. Well judging by the size of that thing that means you aren’t going to be taking it anywhere so that means you would have to go back to wherever it is to use it. Doesn’t seem so easy to fit into a schedule for a lot of people.
And if 4 minutes is all you have to spare for exercise…how valuable is your time that would justify the purchase of this thing over something else that takes a little bit longer? Does that mean that a 20 minute workout using an $80 piece of equipment isn’t worth your time? Are you Donald Trump? (If you are what are you doing reading my blog if your time is worth that much money?) To conclude, are you kidding me?
What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Why?
Rest in Peace Ronnie James Dio
Posted by: | CommentsI know you have all heard me talk about different things involving fitness and what not but that’s only one facet of my personality. Another big thing to me is music, particularly classic heavy metal from the 70′s and 80′s both as a listener and as a participant. One of the biggest influences to me as a singer was a man that went by the name Ronnie James Dio.
Dio had a very distinctive roar and control in his voice. His was a voice that was inspirational. Fronting some of the top bands known as Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell and a band named after him; Dio. I had seen him singing for Dio as well as opening for Judas Priest under with the band Heaven and Hell (Dio era Black Sabbath).
May 16th this year he lost his battle with cancer. I knew he had had it for some time but I honestly believed in my heart he was going to win. What a shock it was to go home and log onto facebook and see the get well soon Ronnie James Dio page turned into a remembrance. His music was unforgettable, his charity for band aid (the heavy metal version of live aid) couldn’t have been done without him. I will miss his contributions to music but I do know he will live forever in the music that has influenced several of us metal heads so.
In the meantime I want to point out that you can help fight the fight. You might know one of my influences as a fitness coach is a man by the name of Alwyn Cosgrove. Alwyn is a multiple time cancer survivor and had put together a compilation of several different articles created by many coaches who had also influenced me and put it on a CD. it contains over 800 pages of info from the likes of Pavel, Mike Mahler, Zach Evan Esh, Smitty and more. All proceeds go to the lymphoma society
Long live Rock n Roll and RJD will live long within his music. The ending is just a beginner. God bless you Ronnie. \m/
