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Trainer of Champions - July 2005 |
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Written by Charles Glass
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Thursday, 26 April 2007 |
I have two questions that may seem somewhat silly. With having only limited time available between work and home, three days with about one hour max: 1) Is fat loss attainable without cardio? 2) Can I split the workouts on two of the days and do a full body on the third? This way, in a sense, I'd be hitting the body parts twice a week.
Questions are never silly as long as the person asking them is sincere in wanting advice. Can you lose body fat without cardio? You could lose a little bit, but if we are talking about a meaningful amount that would make a significant difference in your bodyweight and appearance, I'm afraid that without cardio, it's impossible. I know there are some rare individuals who claim they don't need cardio because they don't rest much between their sets of weight training. They fail to realize or appreciate that they are the lucky owners of gifted metabolisms that make it almost impossible for them to ever carry much fat on their bodies. You would literally have to strap one of these people to a chair and force-feed them pizza and donuts for a couple of months to start seeing some fat accumulation. For everyone else, a clean diet and aerobic activity are mandatory.
That doesn't mean you have to perform extremely intense cardio. Long walks at a brisk pace will also burn fat. Many people also find this type of cardio less boring, since you actually have a destination to reach, unlike a treadmill that goes nowhere. If you have a dog, you can take your pooch along for some exercise. Try to find some nice scenery, like the woods or a beach, and it will even be relaxing and stress-relieving. If you want to do more intense cardio and speed up your results, try wind sprints or stadium stair climbing.
Your second question was about how to split the body up most efficiently. The way you outlined would be fine, but I would make sure to put the full-body workout in the middle. That would just be my preference to allow for a little more rest.
As a personal trainer, I always want to increase my knowledge base. Could you suggest some resources to help me to do this?
I would read as much as possible about resistance training and nutrition. There is a lot of great information to be found on the Internet, but I also believe in good old-fashioned print magazines, like MD, and Books. It can be costly to subscribe to a lot of magazines and buy Books on a regular basis, but you should consider it an investment akin to a college education. I would also become a regular visitor at your local library so you have access to more Books, as well as medical journals like JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association).
Of course, you should also compliment all your book learning with practical experience and your own research. As a trainer, I recommend you do what I do; I experiment on myself with new exercises, or new twists on old exercises, before I have my clients try them. Finally, most certification organizations like ISSA and ACE offer seminars and workshops year-round on various subjects related to strength training, cardiovascular exercise and nutrition. You should be attending and participating in these as often as you are able, and there you will also meet many other trainers who are committed to being as knowledgeable as possible. Keeping in touch with them via e-mail and telephone gives you even more resources for information, as you should all be sharing what you learn with each other.
I'm very glad to see someone so eager to be the best at what they do. One thing that has always bothered me is knowing that there are a lot of so-called "personal trainers" who take one course simply to get certified, then never bother to even attempt to expand their knowledge and expertise any further. Trainers like you are a credit to the profession and I encourage you to keep up the great work. Believe me, it will all pay off. Trainers like you are few and far between and eventually you'll be in very high demand.
Charles, I have severe tendonitis in my elbows and it's finally gotten to the point where any type of extension movement with barbells or dumbbells for triceps causes excruciating pain. Here's the kicker- my arms, especially my triceps, are a weak body part compared to the rest of me. I could really use some help or ideas about how I can go about putting some size on them without doing anything like skull crushers or overhead dumbbell extensions. One last thing, dumbbell kickbacks don't cause any pain for some reason, but I have always heard they weren't very good for mass.
I think you would be surprised to know just how many bodybuilders suffer from the same type of elbow pain you do. The wear and tear on the elbow tendons from years and years of heavy training is unavoidable. My client Chris Cormier recently had to take a break from heavy barbell presses due to elbow pain, and switched to Hammer Strength machines. To me, that's one of the best aspects of training. If one exercise or type of exercise causes pain, there are always many other exercises and methods to turn to instead.
The fact that you can't perform extension movements with free weights doesn't mean you can't make your triceps grow. Cables can get the job done very well when it comes to tri's and you have a lot of options available to work them from various angles. First of all, you can do regular standing cable pushdowns, either with a short straight bar, a cambered bar (shaped like a miniature EZ-curl bar), a V-bar, or a rope attachment. You can use an underhand or overhand grip. You could rig up a stirrup or D-ring attachment and do single-arm reverse-grip extensions. Then you have more choices as far as overhead extensions go. You can take a bar from the top pulley and lean away from the stack, or set up a flat or incline bench next to the stack and use an attachment from the bottom cable pulley. And while dumbbell kickbacks aren't so great for size, using a rope attachment on a low cable pulley can be.
So right there, you have a very large selection of extension movements to use.
Just be sure to always warm up thoroughly with a few high-rep sets. A lot of people assume they can't incur any tendon damage with cables, but if you jump into using heavy weights with any type of exercise, the potential is always there. Also, you didn't say anything about weighted dips or close-grip bench presses. If you're able to perform either or both, I would always try to include one of those in your triceps workouts. Compound movements are excellent mass builders and combining them with extensions gives you a very effective and complete triceps workout. So don't worry, if you're determined to get your tri's to grow, there's nothing stopping you! Just work hard and don't convince yourself that they're a "weak body part" that refuses to grow.
I work full-time, 8-5, and go to school weeknights from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. or 5 p.m. to 10. I feel like I can't get on track with my lifting. I do my routine on Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, but my body isn't getting anywhere. I'm planning on taking this seriously once and for all. Here are my dilemmas: I don't know if I should train at 5 a.m. I hear training in the morning is best for your body. Is it? I weigh 195 and don't know my body fat, but I'd like to get that down a little and gain some more size. So, I don't know exactly how to incorporate cardio into this. As far as eating goes, I've tried reading as much as I can about it. I got down the one to two grams of protein per pound of bodyweight, but what about calories/carbs/fat intake? What's ideal? Also, I understand it's recommended to eat every two to three hours. How many calories per meal or per day for someone my size? I have plenty of protein powder because I think it would be quite hard to eat 200-400 grams of protein from straight food. Please advise me about all this.
I've been hearing for years about how the morning is the best time to train because your body's natural levels of growth hormone hit their daily peak at something like nine or 10 a.m. While that may be true, I don't believe that there is any one absolute best time of day to train. The best time is when you have the time and the energy to put out your best effort in the gym, period. A lot of people like to train early in the morning simply because if they put it off until much later in the day when they have been working or otherwise running around, their energy levels are greatly diminished and they simply don't have as much left to give to their workout. So five in the morning may be the best time for you, as long as you aren't missing out on any sleep to pull it off.
Not everyone has the option of deciding when they train. Single parents with infants or young children may prefer to train before work, but they can't leave their kids home alone. They may have to wait until after work and put the kids in the gym's daycare. But the good news is that the body will quickly adapt to just about anything. Eventually, it will get used to performing well at 4 a.m. or 7 p.m., or whenever time it is that you have to work out.
Next you wanted to know about cardio and diet. You can start out by doing three weekly sessions of 30 minutes of cardio and see how that works, and adjust upward if you need to. I really don't have any idea how much fat you have now, or how much you need to lose, since you were vague about that. The same goes for trying to tell you how many calories someone "your size" should be eating. I have never felt that telling someone to eat x amount of calories per pound of bodyweight was wise, because body composition and metabolic rates vary wildly among individuals. A 195-pound advanced competitive bodybuilder, for instance, would be able to eat quite a few more calories than a 195-pound chubby guy. I would just say to keep your protein high and limit your carbs and healthy fats. If you are not losing fat, cut back on the carbs a little more. You can use the protein powder as meal replacement shakes, or as a way to boost your overall protein intake with smaller meals, which is the way I do it. But pretty much, high protein and lower carbs seems to work well for most people when it comes to preserving muscle mass and staying lean.
I understand from doing a lot of reading that the legs seem to grow best from a mix of both high and low reps. I'm just a little confused about how to approach that in a workout. Should I do some exercises with heavier weights and low reps, then pick different exercises to do the higher reps, or should I do various rep ranges for the same exercise, such as doing squats for sets of five, 10, 15 and 20? Or would I be better off alternating heavy and light leg days, so I do low and high reps at different workouts altogether?
Legs do respond well to a mix of high and low reps, but in my experience, they don't grow much from doing just low reps. Having heavy and light days for the upper body works fairly well, but I feel you should always include some higher reps for legs. As for doing one exercise for a specific rep range, that could work, but I think you would get better results mixing it up. For example, let's look at how I might have someone do their sets of leg presses (counting the carriage of the machine as 45 pounds to make things easier to follow):
Warm-ups: 225 x 15, 315 x 15, 495 x 10
Sets:
685 x 20
765 x 15
855 x 12
945 x 8
495 x 25
That gives your legs a really nice mix of heavy weight and high reps. You worked up to a heavy weight and then you finished off with a lighter weight and pumped the quads up like crazy. Most bodybuilders get very good results training in a similar style. In general, the legs respond to high volume, so don't be afraid to hit them with a lot of sets and reps in any given workout. They are powerful and they have amazing endurance, so to make them grow to impressive proportions, you can't be afraid of working them hard and long.
Journal: April, 2005
Some Very Sad News
My mother passed away at the age of 78 last month. We were very close, having moved out to the Los Angeles area from Michigan back in the late ‘60s. Technically, she died as a result of respiratory failure and pneumonia, despite the fact that she went into the hospital for a blockage in her digestive system. Things may have not been done properly and the matter is currently under investigation. Since it may be a potential legal issue, I can't comment any further. Rather than sit at home and be miserable, I kept myself busy training all my clients. Mom passed right before the Arnold Classic and the funeral wasn't going to be until early the next week, since my family back in Michigan had to fly out for it. I went out to the Arnold to support Chris Cormier and also to take my mind off the loss.
San Francisco and Australia
While Chris was holding a tiny bit of water at the Arnold, he was in perfect shape in San Francisco, as well as being much fuller. Dexter was a little off there, so Chris caught him and beat him. Then it was Chris's turn to lose again in Australia. Lee Priest was very smart to arrive a week ahead of time so he could rest and dry out. Chris procrastinated and waited until the last minute to travel there, and wound up holding water from all the flying. I know Chris was very upset to lose to Lee, because he feels like Lee is missing body parts like the back and chest. Cormier also has those deep thigh cuts that Lee doesn't. Personally, I prefer Chris' type of physique with his X-frame structure, but I have to hand it to Lee for being in the most incredible condition of his lengthy career. Lee has actually been competing as a pro even longer than Chris has. I imagine Chris was pretty close to Priest in the symmetry round, but Lee probably dominated the muscularity round. Lee has some freaky body parts and as ripped as he was, the judges must have been blown away looking at him.
The Pump ‘N Pose Madness Needs to End!
One thing that really bothered me at the Arnold and the San Francisco shows was seeing how prevalent the use of Synthol, or Pump ‘N Pose, whatever you want to call it, has become. I was looking at some really strange muscles that were lumpy and misshapen. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but these injected body parts are the ugliest thing I have ever seen and a total mockery of what bodybuilding is supposed to be. The judges need to be more observant and mark these guys down to send a message that it won't be tolerated. Not only is it aesthetically repulsive, but who knows how dangerous the long-term effects will be? Somewhere down the line I think we will start to see an epidemic of major medical problems from all this site-injecting, and it will be yet another black eye on our sport that we don't need.
MuscleTech's Bodybuilding Trilogy DVD set
I have been getting a lot of positive feedback on the MuscleTech DVD that I appear in, but I have to admit I haven't seen it yet! I do have it here, but I just haven't watched it. I'm a little lazy when it comes to that type of thing and sometimes a tape or DVD will be around for months before I finally put it in and take a look. Of course, I have had other things on my mind over the last month with my mother and all. I will watch it eventually. I also have one more photo shoot to do with MuscleTech and then I think the ads with my transformation will start coming out. They may even be in this issue, for all I know. That's all for now, until next month.
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Performance Nutrition 