— Ever since I first brought up the countless benefits of switching to a plant based diet nearly two years ago a lot of people have started making smarter nutrition choices. The problem, however is that not all foods are what they appear to be, and everything that goes into making them isn’t always listed on the label. To help clear up some of the confusion I have enlisted the help of my colleague, nutrition and fat loss expert, John Alvino. John has designed an incredible list of plant based meal plans that you can see HERE.
John, the first food I want to address is gelatin. Most people think gelatin is completely fine, but can you tell us where it really comes from?
Gelatin is made from the boiled bones, skins, tendons and other connective tissues of animals. I know this sound gross but, hey, YOU asked! Gelatin can be found in Jell-O, many candies, marshmallows, desserts, and breath mints (such as Altoids), to name a few. There are many other… …continue reading.
A plant based diet is obviously far healthier than a meat based diet. And it’s easy to get absolutely ripped while following a plant based diet. Unless, of course, you eat like a lot of uneducated vegetarians. Just removing meat and dairy from your diet doesn’t make you any healthier if you are still eating excessive amounts of junk food. Eating more fruits and vegetables does. My colleague, John Alvino has just created an entire set of plant based meal plans (that are only available until Midnight, tonight) that will get you shredded in no time. I asked John what he thought were the top three foods that most vegetarians eat but need to avoid if they want to lose fat fast. Here are his answers:
#1 Food to avoid on a plant based fat loss diet:
Excessive soy products
Most vegetarians consume copious amounts of soy. Heck, it is not uncommon to see soy milk for breakfast, soy burgers for lunch and soy ice cream for a late night snack.
These foods can stop your fat loss dead in its… …continue reading.
People who want to know how to build muscle fast often ask me what the most important thing they can do in their workouts is to boost their rate of progress.
It’s very simple. The most important thing you can do each and every single time you go to the gym is to try to set a PR (personal record) on every lift you do. That’s it. What this means is that you should always be trying do either do more reps with the same weight (within reason, any sets above 12 on most upper body exercises and 15-20 reps on lower body exercises will do nothing to stimulate muscle growth) or more weight for the same number of reps. Doing the same thing that you have done in a previous workout will do absolutely nothing to help you build lean muscle. The first time you apply a new stress to the body it will adapt by building itself up bigger and stronger. But when it faces that exact same stress again the next time, it will be prepared for it and thus will not adapt again. This is why you have to go up in either weight or… …continue reading.
After all these years, and to celebrate the opening of our new location we finally have a proper website for the gym.
Check it out at http://www.TheRenegadeGym.com/
Question: I am a little confused about how to set up my conditioning workouts and what the guidelines and parameters should be. Could you help me out with that?
Answer: Ok, when discussing conditioning the first thing that needs to be asked is what is your primary training goal at the moment?
If it is to get huge and strong, then conditioning must be limited and can not interfere with your main workouts.
If you are training for a sport and need a mix of both strength and conditioning, that is another story.
And if you are just looking to get shredded that is a whole other scenario.
For athletes, which is how everyone in my gym trains, you will do strength/power workouts MWF and conditioning 1-3 other days (usually two). Maybe Tues and Thurs or Thurs and Sat. Whatever. It depends on exactly what is more of a weakness and what is a main priority, strength or conditioning.
When you are choosing this option, the conditioning workouts shouldn’t interfere greatly with the strength days, but the fact is they will have some small negative impact. Unless you are just looking to become a big,… …continue reading.
There are three exercises that need to become staples in your program to if you want to build a thick, muscular back and those are chin ups, rows and deadlifts. Everything that isn’t a variation of one of those exercises is essentially a waste of time for anyone looking to add tons of mass as rapidly as possible.
Starting from the top, we have the traps which go from the neck all the way down to the mid back. These can be worked most effectively with dead lifts, shrugs and hang cleans. Deadlifts should be done for sets of 1-5 reps unless your technique is perfect and you are an advanced lifter. In this case you can experiment with higher reps. Just be sure that you can maintain the stiffness in your abs and spine throughout the set. Shrugs are best kept at 6-15 reps and cleans should usually be done for six reps or less.
Next are the smaller muscles around the shoulder blade area which are the infraspinatus, rhomboids, teres major and minor and rear deltoids. These muscles work during all forms of rows. If you are really… …continue reading.
I was interviewed for a big name fitness magazine recently and they asked for my top five training tips. Here’s what I told them…
Train like an athlete- You should be training for enhanced performance and your strength work and conditioning/ cardio should be hard, heavy and fast. None of the light weight, slow motion nonsense, and no medium intensity, steady state cardio that drowns your fast twich fibers in lactic acid, turning them slow.
Use big, full body exercises and add in some throws, jumps or strongman training whenever appropriate. Always strive to increase your performance from one workout to the next by lifting more weight, doing more reps, jumping higher, running faster or getting done in less time. Everybody wants to look like Georges St. Pierre or Gabrielle Reece so why not start training like them?
Use exercises that allow you to move your body through space- When you move your own bodyweight (or bodyweight plus resistance) like you do in a chin up, pushup, squat, etc. you activate more muscle fibers, thus you will get bigger, stronger and leaner a whole lot faster. As far as conditioning… …continue reading.
As you have heard me say many times by now, stress is probably the number one thing that gets in the way of you achieving your performance and physique goals. When you get stressed out your cortisol levels rise and your testosterone levels plummet. Cortisol is the stress hormone that eats muscle and adds slabs of bodyfat.
I have seen this happen first hand with clients many times. When they are going through a stressful time such as studying for exams or trying to make a team, they gain bodyfat around the waist. This is from all the excess cortisol their bodies are producing.
Last year I found an incredible way to combat stress that made a huge difference in my life. Being a naturally high strung, intense kind of guy, I need all the help I can get. Discovering the Holosync Meditation program changed my life.
http://www.ObliterateStress.com/
Within just a couple of weeks I noticed a big difference in my stress levels. My focus improved, my sleep quality was better and I just didn’t get as stressed out about things as I normally did.… …continue reading.
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