Here are just some of the common things I see people getting wrong in the gym.

No Stretching
This one normally applies just to the guys. You would think that there is an inverse relationship between the muscle size and flexibility, because it always seems to be the big guys with horrible flexibility, especially around the shoulder joint.

I guess stretching just isn’t really sexy enough and I’ll admit; I hate doing it too. The long term injury prevention cannot be ignored though as well as improved posture.

Tight hip flexors can lead to lordosis or excessive curvature of the lower back. By lengthening your hip flexors, you allow the pelvis to relax out of an excessive anterior or forward leaning tilt. By correctly aligning your pelvis, the curve in your lower spine will flatten out.

This is just one example, tight muscles all over the body can play havoc on your posture.

1. No Warm-up
I’m sure we’ve all done it at some stage. You’re pressed for time and that warm-up is going to mean cutting down on your lifting time. You load up the bar and hit the ground running. Halfway through the set something feels uncomfortable; a couple of minutes later you can no longer move your neck. Workout over – for the next 2 weeks!

Whatever you choose to do for a warm-up, at least do something. 10 minutes on the bike is not really going to prepare you for lifting but I guess it’s better than nothing. Stretching isn’t the best bet either, but it’s a start. If you really want a good warm-up you should be doing mobility training before you hit the iron. Read more about what you should be doing in The Low Down on Static Stretching.

Working out in the same rep range.
This one is so pervasive in gyms that you’d be forgiven for thinking that 3 sets of 8 was some kind of weightlifting Nirvana. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with 3 sets of 8, but it seems like people are stuck doing this for all their workouts.

You need to change things up a bit. Your body gets used to the same stimulus very quickly. If you’re stuck in a bit of an exercise rut, changing your set & rep scheme is probably the best was to kick-start your progress.

Some of my favourites are:

• 8 x 3
• 10 x 3
• 5 x 5
• 4 x 12
• 6 x 4
• 4 x 6

Working with lower reps using a bigger load will recruit different muscle fibres. You will be recruiting the high threshold motor units, which have the largest capacity for growth and also create the densest muscles with the most myogenic tone. Read Why High Reps Aren’t for Toning for more info on this.

No post workout nutrition
This is such an important time for your body to be getting the nutrients it needs to recover and grow that it amazes me how so many people overlook the post workout nutrition.

Within 1 hour of working out, preferably sooner you body is craving quick acting proteins and carbohydrates. Whey is the protein of choice here as it is the fastest to be absorbed. You also want to get a lot of high glycemic carbohydrates. Post workout is the only time you want to get high GI carbs, because your muscles are glycogen depleted and really need a quick boost to get the recovery process started.

For an intense strength training workout it is recommended that you consume 0.4g of protein and 0.8g of carbohydrates per kilogram of bodyweight. So for an 80kg person, that would be 32 grams of whey protein and 64 grams of a high GI carbohydrate such as glucose, dextrose or maltodextrin.

You can either mix this up yourself or buy a pre made recovery drink. I like to mix is up myself, purely because maltodextrin is dirt cheap and you pay a huge premium for the privilege of having the supplement companies mix it in for you.

Following the post workout shake, your first whole food meal should be eaten within 3 hours of your workout. You’ll want about the same amounts of protein and carbs, but his time you can choose a slower digesting meat, dairy or egg based protein and lower GI complex carbs such as rice, pasta or potatoes.

Great post workout meal

Always performing the same exercises
We are creatures of habit, so this one is not surprising. In the gym, once people figure out the basics of what they should be doing they get a simple program and stick to it. A lot of people have probably been doing the same program for years.

It’s been said that the best program is the one that you’re not doing. Again, this goes back to the previous point. Your body adapts quickly to whatever you throw at it, so you need to change not only the exercises you perform, but also your entire program.

These can often be small changes. Always perform flat barbell bench press? Why not try dumbbells, or incline/decline pressing. Always do back squats? Try front squats for a humbling experience or if you really want to expose your weaknesses, try overhead squats. If you can do overhead squats without falling over then congratulations! Try to change your program every 3 - 6 weeks or until you feel like you have adapted.

The aimless workout
Like anything in life, you need to set goals. If you have no goal to your gym workouts, then you are not going to achieve much. For this you are going to need a well designed program to follow with some tangible goal at the end. Do you want to run your first marathon or have you set a goal of being 10% stronger in 4 weeks?

Having a goal will give you the motivation to push that little big harder at the next workout. You should also be keeping records of your workouts – how else will you know how hard to push yourself the next time?

To many isolation movements, not enough compound movements.
It seems like most guys are obsessed with getting huge guns. If that is what floats your boat then who am I to criticise, but dedicating so much time and energy to a couple of muscle groups seems strange to me.

What a lot of people fail to recognise is that compound movements can be really great arm builders too. Any compound back exercise is going to place a lot of stress on the biceps too. Any type of rowing, lat pull downs and especially chin-ups can do wonders for your biceps, not to mention adding some width to the back, which is probably lagging due to all the effort spent on isolation. Compound movements allow for a lot more load bearing and therefore have great growth potential.

What about the triceps? If your shoulders are healthy, dips are probably the best triceps builder around. Add in some close grip bench pressing and maybe one isolation movement (I know you’re going to do them anyway!) and you have a solid triceps routine.

This doesn’t only apply to arms though. In general gym goers do too much isolation. Take one of the ultimate compound lifts, like an Olympic power snatch. To work the same muscles in isolation would require at least performing: standing calf raise, leg extension, leg curls, shrugs, back extension, abdominal exercise just to name a few. You still wouldn’t get the intra-muscular co-ordination and metabolic kick up the butt either.

Compound movements allow you more bang for your buck and allow you to condense a workout into only a few exercises. Compound movements also stimulate more growth hormone release.

Too much pressing and not enough pulling
Ever noticed how a lot of big guys in the gym have rounded shoulders? Along with arms, bench pressing has to be the most overused exercise.

If you consider that a bench press is a horizontal pressing movement (relative to the correct anatomical position) it would follow that any kind of rowing would be a horizontal pulling movement. In order to develop the agonist and antagonist muscle pairs around the pecs, shoulders and back an even amount of pressing and pulling is required.

Because of this obsession with the bench press, the pectoral muscles, anterior deltoids and certain rotator cuff muscles overpower the back muscles of the rhomboids (responsible for pulling back and pinching your shoulder blades together) and posterior deltoids. Tightness in the pectoral muscles, due to lack of stretching, compounds the problem further by pulling the shoulders forward. This is a gross simplification and I don’t want to turn this into an anatomy lesson, but the take home message is that you should be doing an equal amount of pulling and pushing.

If you already resemble Quasimodo, I’d recommend seeing a specialist first. At the very least you should also cut back on your pressing and increase you pulling until your strength imbalance resolve. Stretching your pecs will also help. You should also check your desk ergonomics – chances are you’re reading this slouched over your desk. Your mother was right when she told you to sit up straight. There is only so much corrective exercise can do for you. If the other 23 hours in your day are spent slouching, chances are you will remain that way.

Horrible form
Again, it’s the guys who are most at fault here I’m afraid. Horrible form is usually the result of trying to lift too much weight. A bicep curl should be slow and controlled. It’s not a back exercise, but all too often you’ll see somebody with too much weight using their back to heave the weight up. I also see a lot of guys bouncing the weight off their chest in the bench press or racking the squat bar with too much weight and then performing 6 inch squats. Who are you fooling? If this is you then my advice is to leave your ego at the door. That gym hottie across the room who you’re trying to impress doesn’t care how much weight you’re lifting, really.

She doesn’t care, really.

Regarding form, a muscle should be worked through its full range of motion – from full extension to complete flexion. I’ve seen the heaving-style bicep curls done where the elbows barely moved at all!

Ego aside, there are still people with good intentions who just get it wrong. If you’re not sure, check out somewhere like exrx.net to get your form correct.

Wrap up
Hopefully this didn’t come across as too much of a rant, but these are pretty simple things that are easy to fix and will go a long way to keeping you healthy and making sure you progress.

Over the years my interest in cycling waned as I became more interested in weightlifting and through my college years the demands to be a competitive cyclist started to interfere with the my demand for socialising. Racing at 6am on a Sunday is not a good idea with a hangover, trust me! In the past couple of years though, my interest has been rekindled and whilst I’m nowhere near the cyclist I once was, I still like to put in a good showing. I also realised that my knowledge on nutrition and training for weightlifting far surpassed my knowledge for endurance events. Back in the day, I just used to eat a lot of pasta and taper my training to a minimum in the final week, but I knew there had to be a better plan than that.

So just what should you eat and how should you train in the run up to an endurance event?

Firstly, lets tackle the nutrition side of things. Endurance athletes always talk about carbo loading. For those that don’t know, carbohydrate loading is the process of eating higher than usual levels of carbohydrates in the lead up to an endurance event. Any good complex carbohydrates like pasta, rice and breads are good choices. The idea is that by eating excess carbs, our muscle glycogen levels will be filled to the max and come race day, we will have more stored energy in our muscles. People often think that carbo loading will increase performance or V02 max. It won’t. It will hopefully increase your endurance, but it will not make you faster. If you’ve ever hit what cyclists call the ‘bonk’ then you have completely depleted your glycogen levels and are now relying on fat supplies to fuel you. Hopefully, by carbo loading properly and fueling yourself during the race, you’ll preserve enough glycogen to last the race.

So how should you carbo load? I came across quite a few methods, but here is what I’m going with. In the 3 days leading up to the event, carbohydrate intake should be moderately high. You should be getting 7-8g of carbs per kilogram of body weight for each of the 3 days prior to the event, except the last day where that is bumped up to 11g (more on this later).

In the 3 days prior to that, carbs should be kept quite low, but not so low that it affects you final exercise preparations. Around 200g or what ever you feel comfortable with should be fine. The idea behind this is that if you deprive your body of carbs for a few days your body will supercompensate and fill your muscles with above normal levels of glycogen once you hit your carbo loading phase.

You might need to increase your fat and protein intake while in the carbo depletion phase just to keep your calories high. You don’t want to be on a low calorie diet here. The same goes for the carbo loading phase – you may need to drop fat and protein a little.

Caffeine
A lot of people may not like taking caffeine, but it has been established for over 50 years that caffeine helps you exercise longer in endurance events. Caffeine not only stimulates your central nervous system, but it also acts as a glycogen preserver. When supplementing with caffeine, the body elects to burn more fat for fuel instead of depleting your precious muscle glycogen. Another nice side effect is that it decreases perceived effort, enabling you to work harder.

Any excuse for more coffee

If you choose to use caffeine as an ergogenic aid then you should try to cut out all caffeine in the week leading up to the event. If your body is used to getting caffeine often it will lessen the effect, so cut it out for a while if you can.

Caffeine should be taken in doses of 100-300mg. A cup of coffee is around 150mg. It should be taken about 30 minutes before the event as caffeine peaks in the blood stream after 45-60 minutes.

Lasty, people are often concerned with dehydration when taking caffeine, but research has shown that there is no change in hydration levels between athletes who supplement and those who don’t.

Pre-race meal
This is something that I always used to get wrong. I’d always eat a decent breakfast and race an hour or two later, thinking that a full stomach of food would fuel me to the finish line. Wrong! Eating a meal 1 or 2 hours before a race is actually counterproductive and will hinder your performance. You need to be eating 3-4 hours before the event. If your event is early in the morning then you either need to get up earlier or skip the meal altogether. If you’ve been carbo loading properly, then your muscles should already be full of glycogen. The aim of the pre-race meal is just to top up those levels that might have dropped slightly overnight.

But why not eat an hour or two before the race? While this might seem counter-intuitive, eating this close to the race can lead to something called rebound hypoglycaemia, which is abnormally low blood glycogen levels. This can lead you to feeling slow and sluggish at the start of a race. It can also negatively affect the conversion of fats into fuel and speed up muscle glycogen depletion. If you want all the science behind it, Steve Born does a good job explaining it in The Pre-Race Meal, although I do recommend a larger pre-race meal than he does.

This meal should be predominantly carbohydrates and a moderate serving of protein. Recommendations vary here from a small 200-400 calorie meal to over 1000 calories. I’m going to shoot for 500-600 calories. Pancakes with honey, a glass of milk and a couple of bananas should do for me.

During the race
For high-intensity race day action you’ll need to be refuelling around 60g of carbohydrates and 750ml of fluid per hour, depending on your size, exertion levels and temperature. Believe it or not, but complex carb sources like maltodextrin are better than simple sugars, like those found in most sports drinks. Complex carbohydrate can empty from the stomach at higher concentrations (meaning they need to be diluted with less water) and faster than simple sugars, providing more energy and reducing gastric stress. It’s also important to keep your electrolyte levels up. Try to find a sports drink that has maltodextrin as its main carbohydrate source.

Training
On the 6th, 5th and 4th day before the race, I like to train for a short to moderate distance with a relatively low intensity. This close to the race, you are not going to make significant adaptations to improve your time by training really hard. This week should be viewed as a de-loading and recovery week. This training co-incides with the low carbohydrate days.

The 3rd and 2nd day before the race are rest days. This also co-incides with the beginning of your carbo loading phase, so you want to be resting to prevent any muscle glycogen from being burnt while your trying to super saturate them.

24 hours before the race is time for the final ride. The aim of this ride is to boost the muscles glycogen storage capacity even further than carbo loading alone. This method is based on a 2002 study by Dr Timothy Fairchild at the University of Western Australia. It showed that a combination of a short-term bout of high-intensity exercise followed by a high-carbohydrate intake enables athletes to attain supranormal muscle glycogen levels within only 24 hours. Glycogen levels where boosted from 109 to an astounding 198 mmol per kilogram – that’s almost double!

Here’s what you do:

• Warm up for 10-15 minutes
• Ride for 150 seconds at near maximal effort
• Sprint all out for 30 seconds
• Cool down for 10-15 minutes
• Eat your first high glycemic high carbohydrate meal within 20 minutes of finishing
• Consume 11g per kg of bodyweight in carbohydrates in the next 24 hours before the race.

Wrap up
By race day you should be primed and ready to crush the opposition! If you’ve followed this protocol then you should be giving yourself the best chance to do well. Ideally, you shouldn’t experiment on race day; try all of this at smaller event leading up to the big day. That’s it – wish me luck!

We also know that weightlifters and bodybuilders recommend a high protein diet to build muscle quickly and many sports nutritionists rubbish the claims that high protein diets are unhealthy or could cause any damage to your kidneys. High protein diets are also said to help with fat loss during dieting.

Red meat. Friend or foe?

So who is right? Read on to find out the answer…

What exactly constitutes a high protein diet?
Well, that depends who you ask. A high protein diet is often recommended at 1 gram per pound of body weight. I think this is a pretty good benchmark, but I guess it really depends on what your goals are. I usually try to hit this mark every day, but I do think that if you are trying to gain muscle in a hurry that upwards of 1.5 grams per pound will get you there quicker.

I’ve tried upping my protein to about 1.5 and to be honest I find it a real chore trying to get in that much protein, especially being a vegetarian.

Do I really need this much protein?
This is something else that the two camps always tend to disagree on. I think a big part of this argument can be explained by understanding that there is a difference between how much protein you need and how much is optimal. This is key. Some dietitians would argue that you only need a small amount of protein, athletes included, in order to build muscle and perform properly. This may be true, but that doesn’t mean you will get the best results. For best results in building muscle, a high protein diet will get you there quicker.

Got Milk?

A lot of these so-called experts who rubbish high protein diets lack any in-the-trenches experience. Most of them have probably never lifted a weight in their lives! They may have lab experience, but they lack any real world application. Bodybuilders have known for decades that high protein diets work. Try telling them that they can do away with most of their protein and still compete and they’ll laugh at you.

Can high protein diets damage you kidneys?
This is often the chief argument by the uninformed regarding high protein diets. It all goes back to some early studies done on renal patients. For those of you that don’t know, we’re talking about people whose have kidney disease and whose kidneys are already failing. In these studies it was found that too much protein puts undue stress on the kidneys in renal patients with a subsequent loss of normal kidney function.

There are no studies showing this same link to people with normal kidney function, in fact to my knowledge, all studies have shown the kidneys to function just fine on high protein diets. Protein does require processing by the kidneys, but in healthy adults the kidneys only function at 25% capacity, so extra load is more than tolerable.

There is also a link between high protein diets and Osteoporosis. Meat and Protein foods tend to be quite acidic and if you read my last post on Acid Balance, you’d know that a diet to high in acidic foods can leach calcium out of the bones and lead to Osteoporosis. I really don’t think that this can be blamed on high protein diets and meat though, rather, it’s a result of combining high protein foods with mostly grains, which are also acidic. Rather, a high protein diet should be complemented with fresh fruits and vegetable, which negate the high acid load.

High Protein and weight loss?
If you’re trying to lose body fat, a high protein diet can help you. When trying to lose weight, you’ll generally be consuming fewer calories than you burn. You can read more about this in my article Extreme Fat Loss: The Basics. The problem is that often the weight loss is lean muscle mass, not fat. To combat the loss of muscle mass and subsequent dip in metabolic rate a high protein diet coupled with moderate weight training can help you to preserve your muscle mass when in a caloric deficit.

If you’ve ever heard somebody say that a calorie is a calorie, they’re flat out wrong. Consuming a high protein diet increases the thermic effect of eating. The thermic effect of eating is the amount of energy required to digest and absorb the food that you eat. Digesting protein required a lot more energy than digesting carbohydrates. In fact the thermic effect of protein is a whopping 30% whereas for carbs it’s only around 7-8%. That means that 30 % of the calories of protein consumed needs to be burned off in order to digest it. Clearly, this leads to a higher metabolic rate and greater fat loss when dieting.

Eggs: metabolic boosters.

Finally, increased protein consumption leads to increased levels of the hormone glucagon. Glucagon is known as an “insulin antagonist�?, meaning it has the opposite function to insulin. Glucagon’s mission is to increase the blood sugar levels when it is low by releasing glucose from the liver and by a process called gluconeogenesis.

Most importantly to dieters though, is that increased glucagons levels also increases the breakdown of fat.

Conclusion
A diet high in lean protein sources coupled with lots of nutrient rich fruits and vegetables will help you retain muscle and lose body fat whilst ensuring that you remain healthy and that your acid balance stays in check. As far as damaging you kidneys - I see no evidence to back this up, so eat up!

These foods will fix your acid balance.

Our bodies need to maintain a slightly alkaline environment of 7.36 to 7.44 on the pH scale, because every cell in our bodies functions optimally within this pH range. When we consume food, all the micronutrients present themselves to the kidneys as either an acid forming compound or an alkaline forming compound. The sum total of all that we eat can then be calculated as either a net acid or a net alkaline load to the body.

Enter Acidosis:
One of the problems with the modern western diet is that we consume far too many acid producing food types and not enough alkaline foods. This can lead to a condition called Acidosis, meaning we’re in a chronic state of high acidity.

The problem with this is that the body must, at all costs, remain in its normal pH range of 7.36 – 7.44. As a result, the body has mechanisms designed to maintain homeostasis and stay within this range. It does this by correcting the body’s pH level by leaching alkaline substances from the body’s cells.

This can lead to a number of health conditions. Hypercalciuria, which is indicated by a high concentration of calcium in the urine. Since calcium is a strong base, it is leached from the bones to neutralise the highly acid environment and consequently, the bones are weakened. This can also lead to osteoporosis. Acidosis can also lead to muscle breakdown. Got your attention now? This is caused by Glutamine, the most abundant amino acid in the muscles, being leached out to neutralise the acidity in the body in much the same way that calcium is leached from the bones. Calcium that is robbed from the joints can cause them to lock up and crack and after a while the immune system will start to attack the acidic cells leading to arthritis. Sodium is another alkaline mineral that is leached. Sodium can be leached from the esophagus, which can cause heartburn and eventually lead to an acid reflux.

When the body gets to a point where is can no longer rob the body of alkaline minerals, it will try and excrete the acid via the bowels, kidneys, skin and respiratory system. With no more minerals to rob, the cells themselves become very acidic. This is problematic because the enzymes used to break down cells cannot function properly in an acidic environment. The enzymes therefore cannot remove the growth of abnormal cancer causing cells and therefore become protected from the immune system/enzymes.

Why are we so acidic and what can we do about it?
The shift in the modern western diet from alkaline producing foods to acid producing foods is mostly the result of displacing high alkaline fruits and vegetables with grains high in acid. Modern pre-packaged foods are also generally highly acid, as is high protein animal foods. Consequently, we need a return to eating more alkaline rich fruits and vegetables and limit our intake of grains.

Try to avoid to much of this.

Fresher and sweeter fresh produce typically has a higher alkalinity and chewing your food more thoroughly can also increase the alkalinity. If possible you should choose organic food as it is generally more alkaline due to the higher levels of vitamins and minerals.

On the flip side, cooked, canned or frozen foods tend to be more acidic than their fresh counterparts. Consequently, consumption should be kept to a bare minimum.

There are also a few supplements that can help to reduce Acidosis. Glutamine supplementation has been shown to reduce Acidosis. A cheaper alternative is sodium or potassium bicarbonate (baking soda) added in a small quantity of around 2 grams to meals with are deemed to be highly acid.

Final word
Addressing acid balance may not be the sexiest topic in health and fitness and is probably not going to help you get a hot body, but I think it deserves more merit than it gets. With the increasingly high incidence of osteoporosis in our society, this should be a big concern of ours looking to the future.

There are a few online resources people can consult to calculate their acid balance and it usually requires only small changes in the diet to rectify the problem. Making these few changes may be the difference between chronic Acidosis and a healthy alkaline diet.

How to build a super shake
Firstly, we’re going to start with the base. For this we use either filtered water or green tea. You’ll need to prepare your green tea in advance, because we want it chilled.

Next, we’ll add a quality protein powder supplement to get the bulk of our protein. Stay away from the meal replacement formulas – they usually contain a lot of high glycemic carbohydrates and often quite a lot of saturated fat. You’ll also want to stay away from the mass builders – they are usually packed with maltodextrin and will play havoc on your blood sugar levels. Great for post-workout, not too good any other time. The powder you choose should be at least 90% protein and preferably a protein blend containing whey, casein and egg protein.

Although not necessary, I like to add Plain Low Fat Yoghurt and Cottage cheese to my super shakes. It bumps up the protein levels and also means that I’m not reliant on the powders for all my protein needs. I try to eat real food where possible.

Now that we have our protein requirements taken care of we need to think about adding some good quality carbs. Fruits are a great option here. If you’re trying to loose bodyfat then you might want to steer away from things like bananas and pineapple, but everybody should add berries. I usually throw in a handful of strawberries and blueberries. Not only are they low on the glycemic index, but berries are packed with cancer fighting anti-oxidants and add a healthy dose of fibre too. It a good thing I’m not on a diet though, because I love adding pineapple. The sweetness really comes through and depending on your protein powder, you might need it. You’ll have to play around with this because all the protein powders seem to have different levels of artificial sweetners in them. I also often add apples or some type of citrus fruit.

Now this is where things get a little weird. I like to add veges to my shakes! When I first heard of adding spinach and broccoli to a shake I baulked, but after trying it I was pleasantly surprised. You can’t actually taste the veggies, but they can make the shake quite thick and fibrous. I also add carrots and beetroot. I’ll admit, the veggies aren’t exactly gourmet, but I promise they are a whole lot better than you’re imagining now. Besides, are you getting your minimum 6 portions a day? This is a great way to get them down.

If this isn’t your cup of tea, you can always add a greens supplement, like Greens Plus or Biotest’s new Superfood.

The final piece of the puzzle is the healthy fats. are a must here. Nuts are also a good choice. I use walnuts because of there high omega 3 content, but any nuts will do. I also like to add some avocado pear to my super shakes. Sounds gross I know, but because of its subtle flavour you really can’t taste it and it adds a nice creamy texture.

Lastly, I add some creatine, but that’s entirely up to you.

So to recap, here’s what a typical shake for me usually looks like:

• Green tea or water
• Protein powder blend (3 scoops)
• Low fat plain yoghurt (500ml)
• Fat free cottage cheese (125ml)
• Strawberries & blueberries (1 handful each)
• Large slice of pineapple
• 2 spinach leaves
• Small handful of broccoli
• Half a beetroot
• 2 medium carrots
• 10-15 walnuts
• 2 tablespoons ground flax
• 1/3 to 1/2 avocado pear
• 5g creatine

This all then goes into the blender and will make enough for 3 super shakes, which I drink in between my 3 regular meals.

Some Tips
Experiment. The first super shake I made was so bad I couldn’t even finish it. This was probably because it was too thick. Water it down so that it is pretty runny otherwise you’ll have a hard time chugging it down. You might want to start off easy and leave out the veggies altogether. You can always slowly add them once you have the rest of your recipe just right. You also want a bit of sweetness in it. The protein powders usually do a good job of this, but I still find it a bit bland without the pineapple. The berries really aren’t going to add much sweetness to the mix.

Final thoughts
This might seem in contrast to the whole concept of the super shake, but I’m a firm believer that food needs to have an emotional element attached to it. It shouldn’t always be about protein, carbs and fat and getting your calories intake just right. Food needs to be enjoyed. By drinking my super shakes, I’m still able to have 3 regular meals to enjoy and allow myself a few indulgences. We should also not forget that chewing stimulates saliva production, which aids in digestion. The super shake work well to keep me on track nutritionally and is a god-sent when I’m on the road. Why not give them a try?

The benefits of stretching cannot be ignored. A lack of flexibility seems to play a role in the development of chronic injuries such as patella-femoral syndrome (knee pain), low back pain and shoulder pain. In fact, a lot of ailments and minor niggles that people complain of often seem to alleviate once a rigorous static stretching regimen is implemented. Performance can also be inhibited by inflexibility. A sprinter with overly tight hamstrings, for example, may not be able to achieve enough hip flexion thereby shortening stride length.

Rigorous stretching programme in progress

Despite these benefits, there are plenty of naysayers and even some research to suggest that stretching before a workout is a bad idea. Traditionally, a warm up consisted of static stretching alone. Sometime in the eighties, a study popped up showing that static stretching decreases power output in the muscles for at least one hour thereafter – not exactly what you want before a weights workout. It has also been shown in other studies that static stretching prior to intense physical activity does not reduce the risk of acute injury. The reality is that static stretching is a poor form of warm up for any type of exercise. I think the problem lies not with static stretching itself, but with what people expect to gain from it. It shouldn’t be used to warm-up; it should be used to increase flexibility in the long run, thereby reducing injury risk.

Following on from this, many experts started recommending static stretching after a workout to negate this strength decrease. To throw another spanner in the works, top soft tissue experts are now recommending that static stretching should be done cold, without warming up. The idea behind this is that when warm, the muscles simply elongate and then return to their normal state, whereas stretching a cold muscle will force it to undergo structural changes and increase in length. So, does that mean we’ve come full circle and should stretch at the beginning of our workouts?

I’m sure you can now see where the confusion comes into play, but that still leaves us in the dark as to when to stretch. Static stretching should be done to increase the length of the muscles and reduce injury risk in the long term, not as a warm up. We’ve already established that it’s not that effective after a workout when the muscles are warm, so the only logical time to do it is at the start of a workout or at a completely different time, outside of your workout. For most people, stretching at some other time is either impractical or just won’t get done despite all good intentions. For this reason, I’d recommend you stretch before your workout. But what about the decrease in strength? Well, unless you’re a power lifter, Olympic lifter or are warming up for a serious sporting event, I’d say you’ll be fine. For the average gym rat, I don’t think we need to worry too much; the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.

What about static stretching being a bad warm-up?
Glad you asked! It’s time to introduce dynamic stretching or mobility training. This should be done after the static stretching and before your resistance training. Dynamic stretching involves moving about whilst stretching. This includes things like arm swings, knee, hip and shoulder rotations and neck circles. The goal here is to get the blood flowing and raise the body temperature. Also, mimicking the movements that will be used in the workout to follow will prime the central nervous system for the load bearing stuff to come. Look out for an article on dynamic stretching/mobility training in the near future.

Take home points

• Static stretching can decrease strength in the short term, is a bad warm-up and won’t reduce the risk of acute injury.
• Static stretching is best done cold.
• Static stretching should be done to increase muscle length and reduce long-term injury risk, not as a warm up.
• Static stretching should be done before your workout, or at a completely different time.
• Following this, a dynamic mobility warm-up should be done to prepare the muscles for lifting.

Stretching isn’t fun and it isn’t sexy. For this reason it tends to be the ugly ginger haired stepchild of gym training. Good old fashioned static stretching is highly underrated. It shouldn’t be seen as an afterthought, it should be an integral part of your training if you want to reduce injury rates, sort out long term aches and pains and perform better.

It seems that our stubborn fat storage areas always seem to be the last to disappear. As frustrating as this is, you will generally tend to lose the weight everywhere else first, before you start to lose weight on your real problem areas. For men, this normally means a big belly, whilst ladies are usually cursed with the bums, thighs and hips fat stores. The usual advice given is that you can’t really do much about it, but what if there was something you could do to target those stubborn areas?

Alpha 2 adrenoceptors.
Basically, adrenoceptors are receptor sites located on the fat cells that are responsible for fat storage. The two types of adrenoceptors we’re interested in here are the alpha-1 and alpha-2 receptors. Without getting to sciency here, the alpha-1 receptors are much less likely to store fat, whilst the alpha 2 receptors don’t seem to want to release fat into the bloodstream to be metabolised. What’s interesting here is that there appears to be a higher concentration of alpha-1 receptors in the lower body, specifically the thighs, hips, buttocks, lower back and abdomen. These sites correlate with men and women’s problem areas, so if we could somehow trick to alpha-2 receptors into mobilising fat, we might be onto something.

Enter Yohimbine HCL
Yohimbine HCL is derived from the bark of a West Africa tree. It acts as a potent alpha-2 adrenoceptors antagonist. Antagonising or blocking these alpha-2 sites prevents them from inhibiting fat mobilisation in these areas. Antagonising the alpha-2 receptors essentially enhances fat loss in stubborn areas that would otherwise be resistant to fat loss!

Only good girls get Yohimbine in their Christmas stocking.

Fat mobilisation vs. fat metabolism
Yohimbine can help you to mobilise fat from stubborn areas by tricking the alpha-2 receptors into releasing triglycerides into the bloodstream. In order to lose the weight however, you still need to metabolise or burn the released triglycerides. So for Yohimbine to be effective, you still need to be in caloric deficit to metabolise the fat.

Yohimbine HCL can be found in a lot of Fat Burners on the market, but in varying amounts and quality. I’d recommend that you get medical clearance to use stimulants as a precaution and only use them once you’ve tried to lose weight the good old fashioned way. No pill or potion is going to deliver magical results, but for those who have tried and are battling, it could be worth a look.

Insulin
Studies have shown that insulin resistance is closely linked to high levels of abdominal fat. When your blood sugar levels rise after eating meals, especially high GI meals, your pancreas releases insulin into the blood stream, which is supposed to shuttle the glucose into the cells and lower your blood sugar levels. When the cells cannot respond properly to insulin, your pancreas continues to produce more in an effort to reduce blood sugar levels. You are then considered insulin resistant. As you become more insulin resistant the pancreas pumps out more and more insulin until it literally burns out. When you are no longer able to produce insulin, type 2 diabetes develops. People with insulin resistance also tend to have high blood pressure and too much bad cholesterol, a recipe for heart disease.

If you’re struggling to lose the belly fat, you might want to look more in depth at the effect insulin might be playing. Also, if you are currently on any medication you should check the package insert or consult with your doctor, because a lot of medication on the market affects how your body regulates insulin and could be causing you to gain weight.

Biosignature Modulation and Hormonal Profile
This is a method that has been developed by world renowned strength coach, Charles Poliquin. He has developed this method from over 20 years of taking skinfold measurements from his clients and comparing the results to their hormonal profiles. Whilst this method is controversial, it definitely warrants a closer look. The following paragraphs are quoted from a t-nation article on Charles’ Biosignature Modulation.

The 12 Skinfold Sites of Biosignature Modulation and some related info:

Chin and Cheek: The first sites to go down during a diet. These sites aren’t linked to any particular hormone imbalance.

Pectoral and Triceps: The androgen sites. High pec readings in men in relation to the triceps can reflect an androgen imbalance. Interestingly, Charles says a female who clocks in at less than 6mm on the triceps site is almost a shoe-in to be on steroids and most likely has to shave twice a day.

Suprailliac and Subscapular: The insulin sites. These sites are related to blood sugar management. High readings here vs. the triceps may reflect poor insulin sensitivity and carb intolerance.

Mid-axillary: This site is correlated to thyroid hormone levels.

Umbilical: The infamous cortisol site. It can be high despite low overall body fat. Charles remarked that cortisol issues are most prevalent among Americans residing in the North Eastern seaboard area.

Knee and Medial Calf: These skinfolds are related to growth hormone. Interestingly, readings on the knee site tend to go up in the third or fourth week of a fat loss diet and then go back down.

Quadriceps and Hamstring: High levels here vs. the triceps are correlated to high estrogen levels.

Conclusion
The best solution to fat loss is usually the simplest in which case you should just follow the guidelines in my fat loss basics article. Remember, if you’re not consuming fewer calories than you’re burning, you won’t lose weight regardless of insulin, cortisol or Yohimbine. Often in the fitness industry, we look to complicated solutions before we have the basics nailed down. Don’t let that be you, get the basics right first and if you’re still battling with trouble areas then give some of these ideas a further look.

NutritionData
NutritionData is the best online resource for finding the complete nutritional profile of virtually any food you can think of. Not only will they give you all the standard macro and micronutrient breakdowns, they also give you other unique data such as the Completeness Score, Fullness Factor, Amino Acid Score, Glycemic Load and Inflammation Factor. It also breaks down the macronutrients, that’s your carbs, protein and fats, into staggering detail.

NutritionData - just peachy

This site comes highly recommended and has many other tools to complement the nutritional stats and even includes a handy firefox plugin. How cool is that?

ExRx.net
This rather curious name stands for ‘Exercise Prescription on the Net’ and contains a ton of no-nonsense information for the exercise professional or fitness enthusiast.

Probably the most useful resource is the Exercise and Muscle directory, which details the function of all the bodies muscles and lists a large database of exercises, explaining how to perform them and also providing a handy animation. So next time I rattle off an exercise you’ve never heard of, this is the place to learn how to do it.

FitDay
FitDay is a free online diet and weight loss journal. If you’re a bit of a number cruncher and like to keep on top of your progress in great detail then I highly recommend you sign up for a free account. You can keep tabs on your food intake, workouts, weight loss and fitness goals.

Testosterone Nation
T-nation has without doubt the most highly sought after, top rated contributors on the net. Their articles really are top notch and the writers come from varied backgrounds such as sports coaches, bodybuilders, biokinetists, physiologists, physical therapists and sports nutritionalists.

Don’t be put off by the fact that the site is geared more towards bodybuilders, because a lot of the information is applicable to the average trainer. A lot of the articles can get quite in-depth and scientific, so if you’re looking to get the synapses firing then this is the place to go to get some bleeding edge information.

Although the articles are great, I’d avoid the forums. They’re quite a hostile place, but don’t let that detract from a highly informative site.

Muscle With Attitude
Muscle with attitude is the sister site of T-nation and is designed for the ladies. As with T-nation, it’s geared more towards bodybuilders and fitness competitors, but again, the information is top notch.

The Fitcast
This is my favourite pod cast on the net. A new episode is broadcast every Monday and the hosts usually have the show packed with nutrition and fitness related content. They usually have very high calibre guests on each week and answer listener questions too. Definitely worth listening too.

So there you have it, six nutrition and exercise sites that I frequent on a regular basis. Now what are you still doing here, get reading!

The type of toned look most women aspire to.

What that high rep training does is increase your muscular endurance, which makes sense if you think about it. You’re teaching your muscles to work for long periods of time. High rep training won’t tone your muscles and has very limited capacity to make you stronger or make your muscles grow.

I’ve also heard guys talk about high reps bringing on more definitions to a muscle group and bringing out their ‘cuts’ or striations. Well, I’m here to tell you that this notion is complete nonsense.

Most fitness professional agree that ‘toning’ a muscle is a bit of a misnomer. It is said that a muscle can grow as a result of weight training, but that it cannot become more toned. The tone that people often desire is just a small growth in the size of the muscles. It should also be understood that certain exercises cannot shape the muscles in a certain way. The muscle will grow and shape according to your genetic profile.

In his book, Power to the People, Pavel Tsatsouline says, however, that a muscle can become more toned. He says this is possible by lifting heavy weights for low repetitions. The idea being that by lifting heavy weights, you will sharpen your central nervous system and teach it to contract more powerfully. This sharpening will lead to an increased residual tension in the muscle, which Pavel says will give your muscles a more toned look. This tone is therefore not a physical change in the muscle – it is just because your central nervous system is now more alert and keeps your muscle partially contracted at all times.

Pavel also distinguishes between two type of muscle hypertrophy, or muscle growth. Myofibrillar hypertrophy and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.

Myofibrillar hypertrophy is the result of training with heavy weights and low repetitions. It is an increase in the number of myofibrils, or muscle fibres in the muscle. This makes the muscle harder, stronger and more dense. Look at an Olympic Gymnast performing the crucifix on the rings. The striations and muscle fibres of the shoulder muscles stand out in sharp relief. Olympic weightlifters are in the same class. Those are examples of true muscle definition and are the result of heavy, hard training; not the ‘light weights and high reps for definition’ nonsense that goes around.

Sarcoplasmic hypertophy will happen when you train using higher repetitions. What happens here is that you get an increase in volume of the non-contractile fluids of the muscle, the sarcoplasm. This fluid will make you bigger, but won’t give your muscles any definition. You won’t get a lot stronger either. This is why bodybuilders who train this way are bigger than other athletes, but aren’t nearly as strong, powerful or fast as other power athletes.

Try these weights ladies, not the pink dumbbells.

Hopefully this will explain why you should drop the really high rep stuff and lift some heavy weights. For beginners, I wouldn’t recommend going below 5 repetitions in a set. Start of in the 8-10 rep range. For the more experienced lifter, you should try to incorporate lots of set in the 5 reps and lower range, even performing singles (that’s 1 rep) every now and again. The weight should be heavy enough so that you are struggling to complete the set. If you feel like you could have done at least 2 more reps at the end of your set, the weight isn’t heavy enough. On the other hand, don’t go overboard and train to failure on each set. Try to leave 1 rep in the tank at the end of each set.

Ladies, lifting heavy weights like I’ve described won’t bulk you up. To get significantly bigger requires intense training, vast quantities of food and high testosterone levels, so stop worrying about it.

Guys, if you’re guilty of always doing 3 sets of 10 in the gym, you need to change it up a little. Lower rep training will make you stronger and more powerful and will translate to being a better athlete. If you are only interested in packing on some size I still recommend a month or so of low rep training. Why? Because once you return to your usual 10-12 rep hypertrophy workouts, your increased strength will allow you to move more weight in that rep range than before. This will lead to a higher volume of work performed and hence more muscle growth in the long run.

So as you can see, we can all benefit from lifting heavy weights.

So how is this going to help you get a hot body? The short answer is it’s not, but I thought you might be interested anyway and it kind of builds on the concepts regarding Energy Systems that I wrote about in Extreme Fat Loss: The Secret To Burning Fat Fast

Energy Systems: Oxygen Independent Glycolytic System
To recap, this energy system produces ATP energy, the energy used by the body, for bouts of activity lasting around 30-60 seconds. It produces this energy by partially breaking down glucose from your muscles, liver and bloodstream. However, because it’s only a partial breakdown, there is still energy left over after production of the ATP energy.

What is lactic acid then?
The energy left over in the muscle after the production of ATP is called lactate, or more commonly referred to as lactic acid. During intense exercise, this lactic is produced faster than is can be removed from the muscles. It is commonly believed that lactic acid is responsible for muscle fatigue or soreness during exercise. This thinking is incorrect and the lactic acid can actually be beneficial.

Just say no to drugs!

One of the ways in which it is removed from the muscles is by oxidation to something called pyruvate, which then fuels another system called The Crebs Cycle and in turn is converted into glucose via the Cori cycle by a process called gluconeogenesis.

If that was a bit too much of a mouthful, what it essentially means is that the lactate production can help to produce more ATP via its conversion to glucose.

So why do my muscles hurt then?
The muscle fatigue is caused by a separate reaction called acidosis. When ATP energy is broken down, hydrogen ions are released, which decreases the pH of the muscle making is more acidic. This results in muscle fatigue and decreased performance.

Ascorbic Acid, not citric acid. Photo: Paul Bodea

So there you have it. Next time somebody spurts of about lactic acid, you can look like a real brainiac and put them in their place!