10 Training Rules to Live + Die By

Will working at Fitness first health club when I first started pt I could not help and observe that most people would come to the gym and spend 80% of their workouts doing cardio... The other 20% would be spent drinking coffee and chatting... This contributes to ZERO productivity... At my place of work we have limited cardio kit for this reason... Cardio does not get you lean... So here are 10 tips to get a better workout... Start putting these into practice this week... #1. Prioritize Weight Training Whether your goal is fat loss, stronger curves, or better health, lifting weights is a necessity... Don’t get caught up in the myth that you need to do cardio or train in the “fat burning” zone to get lean. Slow, boring cardio is largely useless for fat loss and completely ineffective for increasing muscle... Instead, lifting weights and sprinting are the only methods that trigger muscle growth so that your body burns more calories naturally... #2. Learn How To Train the “Big” Lifts One of the biggest obstacles for most who want to get into the weight room is not knowing how to do the “big” lifts like squats, deadlifts, and rows with free weights... Weight training is a skill that you have to learn. It’s worth the effort to learn the big lifts because they are so much more effective for producing visible body composition changes. This means you can spend less time training... Plus, they’re way more fun than single-joint or machine lifts... How can you learn to train properly? First, your best option is to learn from an experienced trainer. We have 15 trainers at SOS Athletic Excellence and all are available to help you... #3: Prioritize Sprints to Lose Fat—Forget About Traditional “Cardio” There are a few ginormous problems with relying on cardio for fat loss... First, it takes at least double the training time to burn the same amount of calories with cardio as with sprint training... Second, cardio doesn’t build lean muscle mass (and may cause you to lose muscle in the long run). It also doesn’t produce much of an after burn, whereas interval training, such as sprints and weights makes your body burn more calories in the 24 hours after you exercise... Finally, cardio can lead to an elevation in the stress hormone cortisol, which leads to a worse body composition, whereas sprint training elevates hormones that build muscle and burn fat... This doesn’t mean you can’t go running, hiking, or biking for pleasure—just don’t make the mistake of trying to use cardio to fix your physique... #4: Understand How Women’s Metabolism Differs from Men’s Women tend to be at a disadvantage when it comes to fat loss and muscle building because the vast majority of the advice available is based on research done on men. This is a gigantic problem with untold consequences for women... By digging into the research, we can find clues to how women should train... First, working out is essential for women because it teaches the body to increase the use of fat for energy. At rest women burn more glucose (from carbs) for energy than men (who burn more fat), but during exercise they burn more fat then men... Therefore, whether you want to lose body fat or just be healthy, you must workout to improve your body’s ability to use fat for energy—a term known as metabolic flexibility—because it will lead better blood sugar management and easier fat loss... Third, trained women appear to get better fat loss results from sprint interval training with slightly longer work bouts than men... Scientists think this may be due to the fact that women rely more on aerobic energy pathways and deplete ATP more slowly than men. Plus, women recover faster, possibly due to higher estrogen levels... Therefore, women should try longer, more moderate intervals than men such as 1 to 2 minute intervals at 80 to 90 percent of maximal with a 2:1 or 3:1 work-to-rest ratio... #5: Understand How Recovery Differs from Men’s—Use Shorter Rest Intervals Due to the metabolic differences mentioned above, women recover faster even when strength training... For example, a study compared the effect of 1-, 2- or 3-minute rest intervals in an upper body workout with the goal of completing 10 reps per set in men and women. The women in the study were able to complete significantly more reps than men did, regardless of the rest interval used... Obviously, women shouldn’t rely on programs designed for men. Feel free to experiment with shorter rest intervals, especially if you’re not seeing the results you’d expect.,, Also, there is some evidence that untrained women recover more slowly than men and may need longer recovery intervals until they gain base levels of strength and conditioning... #6: Avoid Anything that Causes Excess Stress—“Diets,” Cardio & Mental Stress Long-term stress is especially bad for our bodies because it can throw hormones out of whack... We know from research that when weight loss diets are paired with aerobic exercise, men tend to lose much more body fat than women, who have markedly poor outcomes... Anecdotal reports suggest that when women restrict calories and do intense training such as sprints, they have a hard time losing body fat, especially in the long-term... #7: Train for Strength & Lift “Heavy” Most people who are lifting weights do not use loads that are heavy enough to produce any changes in body composition or strength... Most people weights are too light to build muscle, strength, or bone... A fairly simple method for figuring out which weights to use is described in the next tip. If you lift heavy, our body will respond by getting leaner and more athletic. You’ll have a self-confidence that doesn’t come to people who don’t test their physical barriers... #8: Let The Reps Dictate the Load—The Easy Formula for Lifting Heavy The simplest way to figure out what weight to use so that you change your body is to let the repetitions dictate the load... If you can do a rep goal easily increase the weight... If the goal is four sets of 12 reps I prefer clients pushing hard and performing reps of 12, 11, 11, 10... This shows the weights are challenging... #9: Eat Real Food—You Can’t Out-Train A Bad Diet Many people make the mistake of thinking they can eat whatever they want if they work out. But if you’ve been involved in hardcore training for any length of time you know that in the long run, you can’t out-train a bad diet... Another common problem that plagues mostly women who are trying to lose fat is the tendency to favor packaged, refined foods in the desire to decrease fat intake and keep track of calories. This often leads to constant hunger and a low intake of nutrients... A better solution is to plan your nutrition around real whole food and identify the amount of each macronutrient of fat, protein, and carbohydrates that you want to eat... With the right nutrition plan, you don’t even need to work out to reduce body fat, but training will accelerate results, make them sustainable, and simply makes everything about your life better... #10: Always Have a Plan When You Walk Into the Gym If you’re a trainer or have a background in exercise science, you know that strength training makes people stronger and builds muscle because it overloads the body, causing it to adapt... Our bodies adapt amazingly quickly, which means that to keep making progress, you have to continually change some aspect of your workouts... No wasted time repeating workouts that your body has already adapted to. And when you’re tired or stress, all have to do is get to the gym and work—no need to remember what you did last time because it should all be written down... This method does wonders for keeping you honest and decreasing the chance of you skipping your workout... I hope these tips help.