Lose Stubborn Fat!

Best Exercises for Core (People Are Still Getting This Wrong)

2013-05-18T14:44:29-06:00

First - people still talk about "core" in the wrong way. Situps are not core exercises, they're a hip flexor
exercise, and not a great one at that. Crunches are "ok", but really there's an entirely better way of looking at how to work your core:

Think of your core as doing four things:

1.) Bracing your spine so it doesn't snap forward
2.) Bracing your spine so it doesn't snap back
3.) Bracing your spine so it doesn't snap sideways
4.) Bracing your spine so it doesn't rotate

So the smartest play is to make it do those things! Planks and bridges are your best friends in the world of core work.

Or another way to think about it would be to "plank in all four directions".

Then we add in the single leg stuff so we get the rotational bracing. Simple. Easy. AWESOME core workout.

BEST CORE WORKOUT EVER:

1.) Single Leg Plank x 0:30 L+ 0:30 R
2.) Side Plank x 0:30 L + 0:30 R
3.) Single Leg Hip Bridge x 0:30 L+0:30 R

Repeat that circuit until you feel like you "got what you came for" =)

AWESOME BEGINNER CORE WORKOUT:

1.) Plank x 0:30
2.) Opposite Arm Leg Raise x 1:00 L + 1:00 R
3.) Hip Bridge x 1:00

You still get the rotational core work with the Opposite Arm Leg Raise, and you still get the flexion/and extension core work with the plank and the hip bridge. This is an AWESOME place to start.

THE EXERCISES:

Opposite Arm Leg Raise: Anti-Rotational Core

Hip Bridge: Glutes + Anti-Flexion Core

Plank: Anti-Extension Core

Single Leg Hip Bridge: Glutes + Anti-Flexion AND Anti-Rotation Core

Single Leg Plank: Anti-Extension AND Anti-Rotation Core

And since people still ask - here are the muscles getting worked:

Anti-Extension: Abs

Anti-Flexion: Glutes and Spinal Erectors

Anti-Rotation: External Obliques and Internal Obliques

Anti-Lateral-Flexion: External Obliques, Internal Obliques and Glute Medius

All of these pictures are from my first book - The Stubborn 7 Pounds: How to Go from Good to Rockstar. It's probably the most "complete" book that I've written. While the followup books are very focused, it covers everything.

In System Six: Easy Fat Loss, I deliberately "left room" for other stuff. Essentially what ever you like - running, yoga, martial arts, physical therapy, corrective exercise, or even just prepping your food. If you don't have anything else to fill in the extra with, I'd add in this core circuit.

ABS ARE STILL MADE IN THE KITCHEN

You want to have solid core strength mostly because it protects your back and allows you to go stronger in more advanced full-body-fat-loss exercises like kettlebell swings, squats, deadlifts, single leg deadlifts, military presses, ect.

So while *building* your core strength happens in the gym, being able to *see* a lean hot sexy core comes from what you eat. The maxim still stands - if you've got a layer of fat over your abs, doing a core workout isn't going to change that.

So lose the fat on top of your lean hot athletic body by what you eat, and build the lean hot athletic body inside through your workouts.

Enjoy!

-Josh Hillis

This Diet Is As Old As Dirt (and has always worked)

2013-04-27T10:30:25-06:00

Versions of this diet have been around since the 70's, and always worked.

A couple years ago, a version came out for bodybuilders... and not shockingly it still worked.

Now there is a new, updated version for fat loss... and it still works.

Most of the time the smart play is to go with something that's worked FOREVER. This works mostly because it's simple and easy.

Check it out: The One Day Diet

I Forgot The Sex Part of Yesterday's Review

2013-04-17T23:34:59-06:00

And so I go back to Hemingway in Midnight in Paris. I find the caricatured Hemingway from the movie to be even more fun than the actual - here is my favorite quote of all time:

"All men fear death. It's a natural fear that consumes us all. We fear death because we feel that we haven't loved well enough or loved at all, which ultimately are one and the same. However, when you make love with a truly great woman, one that deserves the utmost respect in this world and one that makes you feel truly powerful, that fear of death completely disappears. Because when you are sharing your body and heart with a great woman the world fades away. You two are the only ones in the entire universe. You conquer what most lesser men have never conquered before, you have conquered a great woman's heart, the most vulnerable thing she can offer to another. Death no longer lingers in the mind. Fear no longer clouds your heart. Only passion for living, and for loving, become your sole reality. This is no easy task for it takes insurmountable courage. But remember this, for that moment when you are making love with a woman of true greatness you will feel immortal."

-Hemingway in Midnight in Paris

So if you aren't having sex like Hemingway's quote above, you want to look into Roman's workouts and diet - having a lean body you are proud of is the first thing. Having elevated your natural testosterone levels through a clean diet, sleep, and lifting heavy is the second thing.

Check it out:

Man 2.0: Engineering the Alpha

Why I Hate Roman's New Book "Engineering the Alpha"

2013-04-17T22:46:20-06:00

"My opinion is, I hate it. If it's bad I'll hate it because I hate bad writing. If it's good I'll be envious and hate it all the more, You don't want the opinion of another writer. Writers are competitive."
- Ernest Hemingway in Midnight in Paris

I hate it for the second reason, because it's so good.

I'm totally joking - and competition is one of the "Alpha Traits" that gets turned on it's head in Man 2.0: Engineering the Alpha. That the "Man 2.0" version of an Alpha Male actually isn't competetive - the drive to better himself is entirely intrinsic.

And that's what continuously surprised me about the book, all of the things it was that I didn't expect it to be.

Like mapping Joseph Campbell's Heroes Journey onto what it is to be a man today, in the process of developing the body you've always wanted. Fitness falling into the classic hero story arc. I've seen people attempt to do things like this before and fail miserably, Roman on the other hand, does this with style and grace - it's fun to read, inspiring, AND each bit is an instantly applicable and usable tool.

The Workouts

As far as the workouts and diet go - they are awesome. But this I expected from Roman. I've read his stuff before, and it's always been great. Where Man 2.0: Engineering the Alpha goes to the next level is in the multi-phase periodization. All of Roman's e-books are single phase (4-6 weeks). Engineering the Alpha has 16 weeks of workouts in four different phases. While each phase (like his previous books) is intelligently put together, the real masterpiece is all four in sequence, and how each of the first three sets up the "final showdown" of the fourth phase.

I do have to dissagree with a couple movement choices. I'm not a fan of any kind of upright row or high pull, as most of the clients I've worked with don't (initially) have the shoulder mechanics not to go into impingement with either of these. The high pull I would replace with a heavy kettlebell swing, and the upright row I would replace with any horizontal rowing variation (dumbbell bent over row would be fine).

That being said, the other 90% of his movement choices get a DOUBLE THUMBS UP. Lots of deadlifts, squats, kettlebell swings, pullups. I also like the new additions like the Javelin Press and the Alpha Press, and even the Alpha Deadlift. Roman shows not only really great selection, but really smart combinations of exercises in each workout, relative to each phase.

It's just a really smart training program.

The Diet

As far as the diet goes - it's geinus. Each phase of the diet is specific to the goal of the workout phase. They match. And for people who want lots of direction, Roman breaks it all down - exactly how much of what to eat and when, based on where your body is now.

It's a really smart diet for maximizing your body's natural hormonal environment for losing fat and building muscle. Testosterone is a major theme of the book, and the workouts and the diets deliver on what will make an impact on your body.

I even learned a lot about sleep. Some of it I'd heard, and some of it was very new. But the book is filled with simple takeaways like "If you aren't getting enough sleep, then upping your sleep can improve testosterone production by 50%" And while it's easy to fall into the trap of dismissing simple and easy advice like that, the comination of those kinds of powerful pieces of the plan will transform any man.

Being an Alpha (version 2.0)

And that brings us full circle to Hemingway in Midnight in Paris - he comes off intially as the "classic" Alpha, and then turns out to be a "2.0 Alpha" - He goes from talking about hating Gil's book and being competetive, to immediately bringing him to his mentor to get coached. From there Hemingway actualy reads his book, loves it, and gives him the one piece of advice that is a linchpin for Gil's heroes journey.

Like a 2.0 Alpha - He's a mentor and guides Gil to slaying his own dragons - and he does that all while boxing, hunting, loving amazing women, and living life to the fullest.

There's so much in this book that's great, but here is why I would want you to get it:

1.) It's a fun read

2.) It's inspiring

3.) The workout and diet information is great

Your Heroes Journey

So the workout and diet is actually a path to just straight up being a better man. It's your call to a heroes journey, like every hero in every movie - this is the adventure, the dragon to slay. It's about walking and talking like a hero, and looking the part.

It's hard to adequetly describe all of this, because if it was done poorly, it would really be cheeseball. And the way that it's done, it's inspiring and awesome and fun.

It's a great lifestyle design book crossed with a great workout and diet book, and the sum is more than the parts.

Man 2.0: Engineering the Alpha

Josh Hillis

How I Lost My Mojo (and Got it Back): The Importance of Testosterone, Sex Drive, and How to Preserve Both

2013-04-15T01:13:03-06:00

By John Romaniello

There’s a problem that men facing across the world—a problem that few people are talking about, but a great many are experiencing. This problem needs a solution, but more than anything, it requires awareness. The problem, very simply, is that men are dying; at least, metaphorically. Their manhood is dying.

Men are less manly. That’s not an opinion; it’s a fact. If you want to be a little more scientific and a little less dramatic about it, testosterone levels are dropping—rapidly. And not just in older men; whereas decades ago, this was thought only to affect men in their late 30’s and beyond, it’s now beginning to affect men as young as 22. It’s so bad that researchers from Massachusetts found that the average man’s testosterone (not just older men) has dropped 22% in the last 20 years, and that one out of every four men has below average testosterone. If those facts don’t scare you, if the fact that it’s very possible that you’re suffering from low T doesn’t scare you, then you may not know all of the devastating effects this condition can have.

To help explain why this issue is so important, and help illustrate just how impactful it can be, I’d like to tell you a story—and a very personal story at that. It’s the story of how I lost an important part of myself, and eventually got it back. It’s a story about how I had work around a common medical condition, and take matters into my own hands to solve it. It’s story about how I lost one of the defining characteristics of my masculinity, and about my journey to reclaim it. And this is the first time I’m sharing it publicly.

Despite all the content I’ve written and all of the articles I’ve published, one of the things I’ve never really discussed is how, at 25 years old, in the prime of my youth, I personally struggled with low testosterone—and the way it manifested itself was with low sex drive. Today, I’d like to share the story of how I fixed it; and how in my journey to do so, discovered how epidemic this problem truly was—how my passion for this issue led me to write a book about it. During the course of this story, you’ll learn how this devastating issue might be affecting you; how it’s potentially responsible for lack of energy, or depression, or the nagging feeling that you’re aging faster a bit too quickly. And, of course, you’ll learn what you can do about it.

Let’s Begin at the Beginning

I was 25 years old and had spent the majority of my adolescent and young adult life as a very sexual being. Like most young guys, to an extent, I defined myself by my aspects of sexuality—my virility, desirability, and performance all factored into my assessment of who I was as a man. Before you judge me too harshly, I blame evolution for this. Feeling actualized as a sexual being is a factor in self-esteem; this is just one of the idiosyncrasies of being human. While it certainly applies to women, for men, the relationship between self-esteem and sexuality is especially strong. It’s been shown that this is just one of the (many) complications that comes of being born with a penis. Put another way, from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, your manhood and your, um, manhood are indelibly tied together.

Evolution and psychology notwithstanding, speaking purely personally, my sexual identity was part of my overall identity. And then one day it was gone. It may have been a gradual decline that I didn’t notice, but it felt like stepping off a cliff. I simply woke up one morning and didn’t want to have sex. And, I don’t just mean with my girlfriend (which I could have written off as relationship boredom), but with anyone.

Sex was no longer interesting to me. Not just uninteresting, but also unappealing to the point of revulsion. The thought of a woman touching me made my skin crawl. If you’ve experienced low sex drive, you can relate; all of the people I’ve spoken to in my interviews for the book reported a similar feeling. (If you’ve never experienced it, the best way I can describe to you is the feeling of being really full to the point of nauseous, and then someone you care about trying to feed a home cooked meal…and then getting really upset when you didn’t want to eat it.) These subjects also discussed the feelings of shame and guilt associated with low sex drive—shame for not wanting sex, guilt for the way it made their partners feel.

At first, I was bothered by the void—the hole left by not wanting sex, and all the extra time on my hands from not having it. For a time, I wanted to want sex. Eventually, it stopped bothering me. Then, in moments of reflection, in the early hours of the night when I was pretending to be asleep in an effort to avoid another conversation about it, I was bothered about not being bothered about it. And then that stopped too. From that point on, I watched with a strange sort of detached bemusement as the ramifications of my condition tainted piece after piece of my life.

Needless to say, my relationship was one of the casualties. After nearly eight months of incredibly infrequent and probably lackluster sex, my lady and I called it quits. A dearth of sex is dangerous in any relationship, is it leads to lack of intimacy and a widening fissure between partners. Some relationships can survive that; mine couldn’t. She’d had enough of feeling unwanted and unattractive, and I’d had enough of feeling guilty about making her feel that way.

This happens more than you can imagine, and as covered in a 2009 piece in a New York Times blog, psychologists see over and over that when stops in a relationship, the couple begins to struggle with lessening intimacy—and the longer that relationship goes without sex, the harder it is to reclaim intimacy. For many couples, that starts with testosterone. For this reason and a host others, low T can cause depression, lack of ambition, and even thoughts of suicide. It didn’t go quite that far for me, thankfully, but it certainly wasn’t fun.

Here’s the truly scary part: I didn’t actually know I had low testosterone. I had no idea what was causing the issue; all I knew is that I wasn’t who I had been. I had lost not just one part of myself, but several—because the fact is, sex drive is strongly tied to all drive. When it drops, so too does your ambition, and your motivation to achieve that ambition. For me, it felt like I’d become a different person, a lesser man. Without exaggeration, ever part of my life was negatively affected: my relationships, my sleep patterns, and my physique—even my productivity and business were all hampered.

Eventually, I spoke to a friend of mine who suggested I get my testosterone levels checked. They were low, in a relative since—certainly lower than they should have been at my age. I measured less than 400ng/dl. This is right about the point where research suggests many men begin to experience to symptoms of low T. Unfortunately, that still fell within the range of “normal”, because that range of is so vast. Depending on which lab you get tested at, “average” can be from as low as 260ng/dl (nanograms per decaliter) to as high as 1080ng/dl). Meaning, that if you’re at around 800ng/dl and your testosterone falls by 50%, you’re still within the “reference range”, and therefore, not be considered low. (As a related aside, this is something I humbly suggest needs to addressed by the medical community.)

The problem for me personally became that I was in a strange grey area—I was low enough to be experiencing a ton of symptoms, but too high to qualify for treatment of any kind. My doctor advised me that while my levels were low for my age, they were still technically normal, and I just had to deal with it. Very rarely has stupider medical advice been given. I had to take matters into my own hands, and had two choices: I could either simply procure illegal testosterone and start injecting it, or figure out a way to increase T levels naturally. Although I’d be lying if I said I didn’t briefly consider the former, in the end I’m happy to report I went the latter.

Over the course of the next several months, I dove into all the literature I could find and started making a lifestyle overhaul. My sex drive returned—rather rapidly. In 6 weeks I felt different. After 12, I got tested again, and my testosterone levels had literally doubled—doubled! I was productive again. I started dating. I reclaimed my physique and liked the way I looked again. I felt ALIVE again.

As you might imagine, I was struck by how well it worked, and how simple it had been, once I knew what to do. And I decided that eventually, I would write a book about it—because I felt that men truly needed it. In the process of my research, for both my personal use and the book, I came to realize just how much men need it, how epidemic this problem really is.

The goal of Man 2.0 has been, from the outset, to not only provide a solution to a huge problem, but also to create awareness of it. This article will certainly create some awareness, but I’d like to use this platform to provide a solution. While I can’t be as starkly informative as I am in the book, below you’ll find three high-yield tips to naturally increase your testosterone and improve your sex drive.

How to Increase Testosterone Naturally

Reduce Carbohydrate Intake
More and more, it’s becoming obvious that high carbohydrate diets are a pretty bad idea for the majority of people. In this specific case, as usual, the reason is insulin; although insulin is produced when you eat any food, the insulin response to carbohydrates is significantly greater than the response to fat or protein. Insulin affects your testosterone and sex drive in a number of ways.

Firstly, production of insulin halts secretion of growth hormone, which potentiates testosterone production. Secondly, chronically elevated insulin levels have been show to increase the likelihood of erectile dysfunction.

Limiting carbohydrate in helps to reduce the production of insulin, and help avoid the sexual issue that can arise.

Reduce Your Body Fat
As if your really needed another reason to bring your body fat down—because, you know, diabetes and heart disease just aren’t scary enough—men with lower levels of body fat are consistently tested with higher testosterone. Conversely, men with higher body fat have greater levels of estrogen. This piece mentions the relationship between testosterone and body fat, but suffice it to say that getting leaner will improve your T levels and sex drive. But, since you’re going to follow the first tip and lower carbs, losing body fat won’t be an issue, so you’re set.

Increase Dietary Fat Intake—Especially Saturated Fat
For years, people have been afraid of fat and cholesterol, despite the fact that avoiding them seems not to be slowing the growth of the obesity epidemic at all. Gripes aside, fat isn’t just “not that bad” for you—it’s far healthier than you’ve been led to believe.

Further is study is needed to confirm this, but seems likely that the “health issues” that are sometimes thought to be correlated with high dietary fat and cholesterol intake are probably more do to other lifestyle factors. For example, despite the fact that high fat intake has been linked to heart disease, the recent popularity of the Paleo diet has produced a tremendous amount of anecdotal evidence that people on higher fat, lower carbohydrate diets do not seem to experience a radical increase in cholesterol—particularly when this diet is combined with exercise.

In fact, often times cholesterol levels go down. Most importantly, the ratio of HDL:LDL tends to improve, as do other markers of health, like total triglyceride count, which decreases.

More importantly, concern about “high cholesterol” is generally overblown, because cholesterol is largely misunderstood. Something to consider is that cholesterol is actually a pre-cursor to all sex hormones—including testosterone. And so, for men looking to increase testosterone and sex drive, avoiding dietary fat and cholesterol is a bad idea. In fact, it’s been suggested that increasing cholesterol increases testosterone.

Wanna safeguard your sex drive? Bring on the bacon!

Final Thoughts
As I mentioned above, low sex drive is a harrowingly trying problem to deal with, and it’s more common than you think, because low Testosterone is truly epidemic. And while deceased libido is, for most men, an unavoidable consequence of low testosterone, what’s not inevitable is the drop in T.

The first thing you need to do: get tested. Even if you’re not currently experiencing any of the symptoms, you should at least know your T levels so that you have a baseline of comparison for the future. From there, follow the above tips to start taking control of your body and creating a hormonal environment that will facilitate a healthy, well-balanced life—one that includes sex.

by John Romaniello
author of Man 2.0: Engineering the Alpha