How Often Should You Train?
Posted August 28, 2009 1:02 PM
HIPERFIT Miami Beach
Short answer? It all depends. Actually, it's more a question of overresting than overtraining. That's because in the gym you don't build muscle up so much as tear it down. The weights shred it, and cause microtrauma. Repair happens when you're at rest or asleep and the nutrients you've consumed lay down a new matrix of lean dense muscle. Not allowing enough time for this recuperation and rebuilding phase results in fatigue and catabolism—overtraining. Avoid it by following a routine that allows for sufficient recovery.
A good routine to adopt alternates a 3-day cardio, 3-day strength-training split. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday do an aerobic activity that elevates your heartrate to 65-85% max effort for 30-45 minutes. On alternate days—Monday, Wednesday and Friday—train with weights. Not a whole body workout, which represents overtraining, but a more traditional approach that utilizes large and small groups together, say, back and bi's, chest and tri's, and legs and shoulders. Include abs on your cardio days.
I used the less traditional approach of arms (bi's, tri's, shoulders), chest and back, and legs (always on their own day) to good effect. It's plenty of work, especially on chest and back day, but I saw steady gains. When I found my shoulders lagging, they got their own day along with traps. Now when I train arms I hit my bi's and tri's a lot harder with less sets for a great pump. You learn and you grow.
Try this routine. Do chest and back on Monday. When worked together—one pulls, the other pushes—these antagonistic muscles provide a good upper body pump and straighten your posture. Don't be surprised if you leave the gym feeling ready to knock people down on the sidewalk! On Wednesday, hit your arms hard. Do a "neck to finger" workout involving traps, biceps, triceps, shoulders and forearms. Save Friday for legs. However you do it—a three-day split that works each body part twice a week, or a more advanced four-day split routine—don'tovertrain. Instead, let your muscles recover and grow bigger. That's the whole point!
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Dont Spend all Day Training Your Chest
Posted August 18, 2009 2:54 PM
We’ve all seen guys in the gym doing chest for three or four hours, never mind that pecs aren’t all that big to begin with. In fact, of the three major muscle groups—legs, back and chest—pecs are the smallest.
Forget those endless hours of effort. Train your chest instead with a few key exercises that total no more than 15 sets max. How you train it is more important anyway than how much. Quality trumps quantity, especially in the gym.
| Exercise |
Sets/Reps |
| Chest Press* |
4/8-12 |
| Incline Press* |
4/8-12 |
| Dips |
3/10-12 |
| Flyes (Cablecross) |
3/12-15 |
*Dumbbells or barbells
Your whole routine shouldn’t take more than a good half-hour. Keep your intensity up with rests of a minute or less, and maintain a challenging weight.
Train it like this: Lay down, arch your back and tighten your core muscles. Now lock your abs, bring your shoulders back, and focus tension onto your pecs. Bring the barbell down slowly to the high point of your chest (armpits if you’re using dumbbells). Stay controlled at the bottom before pushing the weights smoothly back up. The negative rep should be slow, .the power stroke explosive.
And remember: if you’re spending more than 45 minutes working your chest something is wrong!
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Back To Basics Only Better
Posted July 28, 2009 5:20 PM
By Jeffrey Bradley
Most people are looking to gain muscle from their workouts. They want more definition, less bodyfat, tighter peaks. Yet, they’re getting further away from the basics. You can see them in almost any gym lifting weights while balanced on balls, boards or bungees. As if. The best way still to get results is by staying with tried-and-true compound exercises like legs, chest and back. Leave the fru-fru to the aerobicists and dance instructors. Use these twists instead on a few old standards to help hit your goals quicker.
Meet the squat, your most basic of exercises. If this muscle builder isn’t in your workout portfolio it ought to be. It engages so many muscles that you can’t help getting tight and lean—if you perform it right. Unfortunately, most people don't go low enough to emphasize their glutes. Their heels will ride up, or they use heavy weights and can’t get to parallel. If you’re not engaging your glutes—your strongest muscles—you’re not maximizing your power.
Here’s a good way to gauge your depth: perform a couple of reps minus the weight bar while watching sideways in a mirror. If your thighs don’t go parallel to the floor then you’re not getting the full benefit. Some people use a bench to guide ‘em, but I wouldn’t. Bouncing off it even a little—and it’s awfully tempting— crunches your backbone. Forget that. Just use the sideways mirror to get the feel of your thighs being parallel. Now, get back under that squat rack and do ‘em right!
Remember to always use the “mind-to-muscle” connection. It’s absolutely essential in isolating your muscles, which, by the way, is the whole point. Let’s take chest. Start by lying on a bench and contracting your pec muscles. Keep them under tension through the full range of motion. Especially during the negative. Do reps like this: While you move the bar keep your muscles tight on the way down, tighter on the way up, tightest at the top. Focus and squeeze your muscle at the top for a peak contraction. When performing the set keep your chest up by arching your back and pulling your shoulders down and away. Now your pecs and not your shoulders will do the exercise. Feel the full stretch to push out of the negative. That’s where your power lies. Absent this concentration you’re just moving weights, which is great—if you’re a powerlifter. Perform all your exercises this way. Isolate the muscle you’re working on, keep it tight and use the weight for a focused pump.
The sit-up is another real basic, the all-time hate or great, depending on your point of view. But lately they’ve been superseded by crunches. Too bad. Crunches involve at most a 30-degree range of motion, this side of building muscle. For a rock-hard 6-pack do yourself a passel of “old school” sit-ups. They keep your abs under dynamic tension and make them bigger and stronger. They also strengthen your hip flexors, something crunches don’t. (If you insist on your crunches vary things up by performing them on a bar or Swiss ball for that all-important stretch; even holding a plate to your chest helps.)
Sit-ups are easy. Just lie on your back with your feet flat on the floor, knees bent and hands clasped lightly behind your head. “Lightly” means fingers not interlocked. A pain in the neck while performing this exercise is a red flag saying you’re lifting your neck and head with your hands. That’s a trap-up, not a sit-up. Do them like this: With your elbows out to the sides contract your abs, tuck your chin, and roll up till your cheeks touch your knees. Slowly roll back. (Key word is roll.) Think of a caterpillar curling up in a ball, segment by segment. That’s you doing abs. Leaf munching optional.
Another back-to-basic strategy for bigger muscles is trading weight for volume. You might think that benching 400 pounds is sure to get you ripped. Maybe. But any good power lifter can lift twice that and still look schlubby. What most people want is a tight, lean look. And a good way to get it is through volume, not heavy weights. Ask yourself this: Do I want to look like an Olympic power lifter or do I want to look ripped? Lifting heavy does not necessarily mean you'll look good. In fact, getting that perfectly ripped body often means doing a lot more total work with the weights—150 push-ups most certainly will get you a lot more definition than 10. Volume simply gives better size and shape than going heavy.
Boost it up another notch by redefining your sweet spot, usually between 12 and 15 reps. Do 18 to 20 instead and you’ll find yourself pushing a lot more weight during your workout. For instance, instead of three sets of ten curls with a fifty pound bar, try three sets of twenty curls with a forty pound bar. That's a huge increase. But keep the weight heavy enough to be challenging or you’ll finish your set looking for more reps. Always feel the fatigue!
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Back To Basics Only Better
The TWO Best Times To Do Cardio
Posted July 28, 2009 5:17 PM
If you're trying to get toned, lean and fit then you must do cardio. It not only lowers your heart rate and moderates your blood pressure but develops a sense of well-being and, of course, burns the bodyfat. In fact, it’s the only way of getting rid of that last bit of flab on your butt and abs. You just can’t get shredded without it. Yet, what most people do is get on a treadmill for 20 to 25 minutes then jump off to lift weights. Unfortunately, this is exactly backwards. See, cardio burns off your glucose (blood sugar), which you have about 20 minutes of stored in your body.That’s a fact. So if you're doing cardio for 20 minutes, well, you may be warming up, but as to burning your bodyfat… phttt! Not happening. Actually, doing more than a 5-minute warmup before lifting weights is counterproductive.
That’s because you need your blood sugar to power your workouts!
Hit the gym floor without any glucose and you’re asking for trouble. Not only will you feel lightheaded and unfocused, but your body will be left with just two fuel-burning options: fat or muscle. As fat can only be burned aerobically, that is, “with oxygen,” and weight-lifting is anaerobic, or, “without oxygen”, that leaves you with only one option for fuel. Muscle! And believe me, you don’t want to be using your hard-earned muscle as cheap fuel. Unless you’re into the sickly skin-hanging long-distance runner look that is, in which case you’re definitely on the wrong page.
Keep this in mind: weight-lifting is not and can never be aerobic. You won’t be burning very much bodyfat working out with the iron.
Do this instead: Do your strength-training first. Always. This demands power, and power demands glucose, which exactly delivers the explosive bursts of power needed to lift weights. And here’s the kicker. Doing it this way burns off your blood sugar and readies your body for burning the fat. So now when you start your aerobics you’ll go straight into fat-burning mode. Voila!
Now all you need is a good 20-30 minutes of really intense cardio to melt off those pounds!
Your second best time to burn bodyfat is when you wake up. Upon rising, your body is in a glucose-depleted state. That’s because your brain utilized your blood sugar to maintain your body all night. So, there you go—no more glucose! Your body will default immediately into burning fat during any aerobic activity. Don’t blow it, tho’, by having juice or coffee with milk or sugar. Have it black, instead, or straight tea or water. Then strap on your running shoes and hit the trail. Remember, all you’ll need now is a good half hour of intense cardiovascular activity to burn off tons of fat as fuel!
Twice a day—when you get up, and right after you weight-train—your body hands you a gift. It’s giving you the opportunity of burning lots of bodyfat in half the time of any aerobics class. Appreciate it, and get lean!
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The TWO Best Times To Do Cardio
