Eliminate The Useless Crap

June 25, 2009

squatqd3 Eliminate The Useless Crap Let’s face it.

You’re busy.

And you have very little time to spend debating what you should do in the gym or what you should be eating.

So I’m going to make it easy for you.

First, let’s cover your workouts. You’re going to train 3-4 days per week and you’re going to get in and out of the gym in 45-60 minutes. This helps to keep your testosterone levels high and allows you to maintain maximum focus throughout.

You’re always going to choose big, compound exercises for each body part. Starting from the top down you will do the following movements:

Traps- deadlift.

Shoulders- dumbbell or barbell military presses.

Chest- dumbbell presses, weighted pushups or barbell bench/incline presses

Back- chin ups and 1 arm dumbbell rows.

Biceps- barbell or dumbbell curls.

Triceps- dips and close grip benches.

Lower back, glutes and hamstrings- more deadlifts.

Legs- squats, squats and more squats.

Simple, right?

Don’t waste time searching for 739 other fancy exercises that won’t work any better than what I just listed. Eventually when you have more time and have made some very solid, impressive gains we can expand the list a bit. But for now stick to the list above and get brutally strong on those movements. Unless you can turn heads with the amount of weight you can use on those exercises you don’t need anything else.

What about cardio? Your head is probably spinning from all the cardio recommendations you read about regularly. So let’s cut through the junk and simplify it.

You’re going to do hill sprints.

That’s it.

That simple.

Twice a week to start, for a total of 15-20 minutes. Over time you can work up to 30 minutes and add an extra day if you want.

Why hill sprints? Well first of all because it’s summer and you should get off the bike or treadmill and get outside more often. And mainly because there is nothing any simpler or more effective that you can do.

Sprints on flat ground are great but require some technique and a long warm up; something which people may not always have time for. Sprints with a sled or Prowler are awesome but not everyone has one. Everyone can find a hill somewhere. And don’t worry about the distance. If your hill is only 30 yards you will do 30 yard hill sprints with as little rest as needed for 15-20 minutes. Over time you will simply try to do more sprints and decrease your rest periods. If your hill is 100 yards, then you sprint 100 yards.

Don’t over think it. That’s a one way ticket to Keyboard Warriorsville, a place where the population is small, fat and weak.

How about diet? Can anyone really tell me they don’t know that Big Mac’s and candy aren’t healthy? You know what’s healthy. You just have to commit to eating those foods. Today I want you to throw out everything in your house that comes in a bag or a box. Straight to the garbage. Now!

You’ll only eat foods that a caveman would have been able to eat. Organic meats, fish, fruits, veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds. That’s it. Its summer time and everyone wants to look good with their shirt off. Trust me, nobody’s getting fat on that diet.

If you’re trying to bulk up I will make an exception and allow you to eat oats and brown rice. But nothing else.

See how easy that was?

Get started today and keep me posted on your progress.

Jason Ferruggia

PS. Want all the guesswork removed from the equation? Get your fully detailed muscle building workout, meal plan and cardio prescription at MuscleGainingSecrets.com

PPS. You see the quads on that girl?!

Written by jasonferruggia · Filed Under Fat Loss, Muscle Building | 56 Comments

Schedules, Off Weeks, Overrated Exercises & Exercise Order

June 23, 2009

Question: If you train four days a week using an upper/lower split, what is the optimal way to schedule the days? Should I do lower body first followed by an upper-body day, or vice versa? Does it matter?

Answer: The traditional way of answering this question is that you should train whatever needs the greatest attention earlier in the week. Sometimes I follow these guidelines and sometimes I don’t. In most cases, I actually prefer to do an upper-body day first, followed by a lower-body day. The reasoning for this is that an intense squat or deadlift workout will take a lot more out of you than will any sort of upper-body lifting. I normally prefer to give the lifter a day off following a heavy lower-body session instead of having them go in and try to do some kind of heavy pressing or pulling when they are probably exhausted from the lower-body workout. Squats and deadlifts take a great toll on the entire body and require more recovery time than any kind of upper body training.
The optimal way to split up four upper/lower sessions a week would be as follows:

Monday: Upper
Tuesday: Lower
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Upper
Friday: Off
Saturday: Lower
Sunday: Off

If you can’t train on weekends, you could simply move Saturday’s workout to Friday.

Question: How often should I take a week off from training?

Answer: This varies between individuals. Some people can only train for three weeks before they need a week off, and others can go 16 weeks. The average seems to be somewhere between six and 12 weeks, however. I rarely let any of my clients train longer than 12 weeks without a week off, and there are only a few that train for fewer than six weeks before needing a week off.

To determine what the optimal ratio of work weeks to rest weeks is for you, you have to consider how hard you train, how CNS-intensive your training is (are you doing a lot of dynamic and max-effort work?), how much stress you have in your life, how long you have been training, how strong you are, and how your recovery ability is. If you are on the high end of most of those factors and have limited recovery ability, you may need a week off every four weeks. If you don’t ever train to failure, rarely use CNS-intensive methods, don’t have a lot of stress in your life, and recover exceptionally well from training, you may only need to take a week off every four months.

What I recommend is that you monitor yourself and try a variety of work-to-rest-week ratios and see what works best for you.

Question: In your opinion, what exercises are overrated?

Answer: Bent-over barbell rows. They are a great exercise, but not a lot of people can do them right, meaning that they can’t maintain a proper arch in their lumbar spine. Even if you can maintain proper position the other problem that arises is that if you are able to use a lot of weight on them they can take a toll on your lower back—especially if you are doing deadlifts and squats in your training program. I would usually opt for a chest-supported row, a one arm row or an inverted row over a bent-over barbell row with extremely strong, advanced lifters or with very weak beginners. When I do them with more advanced guys I usually stick with higher reps to keep the weights a bit lighter and do more of a cheating motion with a controlled bounce. This actually is less stressful on the lower back than a very strict bent over row. And is far more natural.

Dynamic effort box squats are overrated as a way to get explosively fast. I think box squats are great but they are not the be-all, end-all of speed training. I actually don’t think they do anything at all as far as improving speed goes. As far as heavy box squats go, they can be a problem for some people with back injuries. Having said that, I still think the box squat is a great exercise if you can do it properly—just slightly overused and overrated by some people and not worth doing in the hopes of massive improvements in explosive speed. Aint gonna happen.

Lunges are slightly overused, if not overrated, by females. It’s a great exercise, but if done excessively, it can cause knee problems. Walking lunges and reverse lunges are better options as they are easier on the knees.

Question: If I combine speed work, strength work and hypertrophy work in the same workout is there a specific order that I need to do them in or any rules I should follow?

Answer: Yes, there are. You always want to do the most neurologically demanding exercise first in your workout. This would put speed exercises such as plyos first, and Olympic lifts or throws second in most cases. After that, you usually do the biggest, heaviest compound exercise next and work your way down to the smallest, lightest exercises. This rule does not always apply, however. This rule doesn’t always apply but it’s a pretty good general guideline.

For more muscle building information and workouts go to MuscleGainingSecrets.com

Please leave your comments below.

Written by jasonferruggia · Filed Under Muscle Building | 5 Comments

How to Build Muscle with High Rep Leg Training

June 15, 2009

Question: If someone’s trying to build muscle, is there any benefit to including sets of 50-100 reps, either with lighter weights as a “burnout” set, or with moderately-heavier weights done to failure and then continued in a rest-pause fashion?

Answer: For beginners, absolutely not. I actually do the opposite of what a lot of people recommend with beginners who are trying to build muscle; I keep their reps low, not high. Until they master the skill of a complicated exercise like a squat or deadlift I would never risk exposing them to injury with high reps. Their form breaks down after five reps or so when their core strength gives out and they are then at a much greater risk of injury.

With more advanced guys high rep leg training can work wonders and lead to extremely fast muscle gain. Most times I keep the reps at around 20-25, but sets of up to 50 or even 100 reps can work quite well also. Tom Platz built some of the freakiest legs ever seen and was a huge advocate of extremely high rep leg training. I’ve had the pleasure of discussing training with Stone Cold Steve Austin a few times and he has also noted that he was a big fan of squatting for high reps somewhere in the range of 30-50.

Like I said, though, you have to be somewhat advanced and have perfect technique on the squat otherwise I don’t think that the risk is worth the reward. Most guys will start rounding their lower backs, collapsing forward and having all kinds of other form issues if they do not posses the core strength required for such a challenging task.

Some guys would probably actually be better off doing extremely high rep sets on a machine. Although we have never had a leg press in my gym this is the one situation where I would actually use it. Belt squats are great for super high reps as are free squats with a weight vest on. I prefer to hit the heavy stuff first on a regular back squat for a few sets and then finish with the fifty reppers. I would never recommend more than one of these high rep finisher sets.

Question: Does the average guy in the gym need to concern himself with training slow-twitch muscle fibers as much as he trains fast-twitch fibers?

Answer: The average guy in the gym doesn’t need to worry about slow twitch or fast twitch fibers if he is simply trying to get bigger. If you are an athlete trying to jump higher and run faster you want to target the fast twitch fibers and keep your sets short. But for hypertrophy it doesn’t matter. Mix it up and hit both fibers. You can go heavy and target the fast twitch fibers one day and lighter to hit the slow twitch fibers another day or combine them both into one workout. Plenty of big guys have used both approaches with equal success. If you train legs once per week my suggestion would be to start heavy with squats and finish light with belt squats or leg presses for higher reps.

071210 pisarenko How to Build Muscle with High Rep Leg Training
Question: Is there any benefit to doing high-rep deadlifts (or any deadlift variation, like sumo, Romanian, trap-bar, etc.)? Or is there an increased risk factor with deadlifts that makes them not appropriate for high rep work?

Answer: High rep deads are great for packing size on your traps and upper back, but, like I mentioned earlier, this exercise should never be done for high reps by a novice lifter. While you can go up to 50 or even 100 reps on some squat and leg press variations I wouldn’t recommend going above 20-25 reps on deadlifts, and most times I actually recommend limiting the reps to 15 on this exercise. While Dr. Ken Leistner was famous for his 30-40 rep death sets on trap bar deadlifts and the like, I think that would be too risky for the average guy.

In my gym we consider high rep deadlifts to be sets of 10-12. You won’t find too many mass builders more effective than a heavy set of 10-12 reps on a deadlift. But it’s just not a great position for your shoulders to be in for a great amount of time, nor do most people have the lower back endurance and overall core strength to deadlift for more than 10-15 reps or so safely.

If you are going to pull for high reps I would caution against going with an over under grip because that will place the biceps under a lot of stress for a lot of time. This is not a good scenario and should be avoided. I recommend using straps for high rep deads. I don’t believe you should ever use high rep deads as the first exercise in your workout but rather as a finisher after pre exhausting yourself with some heavy stuff first. Sometimes at the end of an upper body day we will do one set of 12-20 reps of deadlifts, which can lead to great size gains. But this is never something I would start with when you are fresh and fully energized. Keeping them for the end limits the amount of weight you can pull and thus makes them safer.
tom platz How to Build Muscle with High Rep Leg Training
Question: Finally, could you offer a sample lower body hypertrophy workout that incorporates higher-rep training?

Answer:
1) Squat- 2 x 5-7, 1 x 8-10, 1 x 12-15 x 120-180 sec rest

2a) Barbell Romanian Dead Lift- 2 x 5-7, 1 x 8-10, 1 x1 2-15 x 90-120 sec rest

2b) Hanging Knee Raise- 4 x amap x 90-120 sec rest

3) Belt Squat (or weight vest squat or leg press)- 1 x 50 reps x 180 sec rest

4) 1 Leg Standing Calf Raise- 4 x 8-10 x 45 sec rest (pause for 4 sec in bottom position)

5) Seated Calf Raise- 2 x 50 x 90 sec rest (pause for 1 sec at bottom and 1 sec at top)

For more information on how to build muscle, check out MuscleGainingSecrets.com.

Written by jasonferruggia · Filed Under Muscle Building | 8 Comments

Men’s Fitness Interview Part 2

June 14, 2009

By Sean Hyson

This is the second half of my interview with MF training adviser, Jason Ferruggia. It’s kind of like The Godfather, Part II, only more violent.

Sean: What makes you stand apart from other trainers?

Jason: I think the fact that I have logged thousands of hours training hundreds of clients. I’ve been doing this for 15 years, 10 of which saw me spending 8-12 hours in my training facility, five or six days a week, and sometimes seven. Everything I do, I tend to do to the extreme. I always want to be the best and I knew that to become the best trainer/coach I could be, I would have to put in a lot of time and work with a lot of clients. I started with regular, everyday people but progressed to training a lot of athletes. To date, I have worked with over 700 athletes from numerous college and pro organizations. I also continue to work with members of the armed forces, Hollywood stars, and tons of regular guys who just want to get bigger, stronger, and leaner.

I’m also not married to any one concept or training style and am willing to adapt and try new things. In fact, I am always experimenting and trying to find a better way to get faster results. While some guys think kettlebells are the only tool and others live and die by Olympic lifting or body-weight only training, I try to use every useful training implement I can find and combine them into the ultimate training system. There is a time and place for everything.

Another thing that separates me from a lot of trainers is that I believe everyone should train like an athlete and chase performance goals, first and foremost. When you train with performance in mind, you always end up with a better physique (as long as you are eating right and recovering properly). The same cannot always be said when you train strictly for aesthetics. That goal is too vague. You need to have something you can measure, like your strength going up. When you do that and focus on the type of training that an athlete would do–heavy lifting, body-weight conditioning, sprints instead of time on a stair climber–you will end up with an incredibly impressive physique.

Sean: Ok. Give us five ways to get stronger.

Jason: In training, you need to focus on big compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, and presses, and you need to continually add weight to the bar. While you can also make progress by doing more sets, decreasing your rest periods, or using set-extension techniques like forced reps, the fact remains that the fastest way to force a muscle to grow is to make it stronger. Do this while training no more than four days a week for 45 minutes per workout.

Hit each muscle group twice a week or once every five days. Train hard but finish all your reps on your own–never let a spotter touch the bar and help you grind out extra reps. That is never necessary and is actually counter productive.

As far as nutrition goes, you have to eat to grow. Studies have shown that sumo wrestlers have more muscle mass per square inch than elite bodybuilders. And they don’t even lift weights! That is because overeating in itself is highly anabolic. Other studies have been conducted where people were fed an additional 1,000 calories per day for 100 days and, without any training whatsoever, one-third of the weight they gained was muscle mass.

Of course, you don’t want to get fat, but I think that illustrates how important it is to eat big. The simplest advice I can give anyone looking to get bigger and stronger is to make sure that breakfast and your post-workout meal are the two largest feedings of the day. That should keep you lean, too. Eat more calories and carbohydrates on training days, and fewer calories and carbs on off days.

Another thing that needs to be considered is the hormonal response to training. If your testosterone and growth hormone levels are high, you will get bigger and stronger a lot faster than if they are down. Here are a few things you can do to maximize anabolic hormone levels.

•   Get around 30% of your diet from fat, primarily healthy unsaturated fats. They increase testosterone.
•   Try to drink red wine instead of beer whenever possible. Beer elevates estrogen levels. Red wine, on the other hand, is anti-estrogenic.
•   Get 8 or 9 hours of good sleep per night. This is one of the best ways to increase testosterone and growth hormone while reducing levels of cortisol, a stress hormone.

Sean: Wow, that’s a lot more than five! And I know you can go on and on if I let you. On a lighter note, I happen to know that you have had a number of hilarious incidents in your gym. Tell the good people out there one of those crazy stories.

Jason: Too many fun times to list here. One time, about eight years ago, my brother was giving me a lift off on the bench press and we were jawing back and forth at each other. He was screaming at me as he handed me the bar before my set, trying to fire me up, and he inadvertently spit a loogie on my face. I threw the bar back to the rack and got right up and went after him. We ended up brawling on the floor… Good times.

Sean: Anything else you want to add?

Jason: I just want to thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak to the readers of Men’s Fitness, and invite them to check out my site and MuscleGainingSecrets.com for more information.

I’ll add that Jason is a helluva guy, on top of being a great trainer. He lives what he preaches (give or take a Friday night, here and there), and everyone should check out his column, The Hard-Gainer (advice for skinny guys trying to get bigger and stronger), in the magazine every month. Check out some of his training videos here.

Written by jasonferruggia · Filed Under Fat Loss, Muscle Building | Leave a Comment

Mens Fitness Interview Part 1

June 12, 2009

ll fitness mag Mens Fitness Interview Part 1 Here is part one of a recent interview I did with Sean Hyson for Men’s Fitness Magazine.

By Sean Hyson
A few weeks ago, I introduced you to our chief training adviser, Jason Ferruggia, so everybody could get familiar with this crazed, shaven-headed Jersey boy… who happens to be one of the most reliable sources of training information out there. Now I bring you an interview with Jason so you can hear him tell you in his own words who he is and why he’s qualified to teach you how to train.

Sean: Tell us how you got into fitness?

Jason: Growing up, I was always one of the weakest, skinniest kids around. I have always been obsessed with sports, but being small and weak wasn’t exactly conducive to achieving my dreams of having a superstar career in the NFL or NBA. I was in eighth grade and didn’t even weigh 100 pounds. I decided to do something about it, and I wanted to get bigger, stronger, and faster.

Around the same time, my cousin started dating a professional wrestler who was absolutely enormous and became something of a big brother to me. I started following his advice to the letter. He wrote me workouts that I thought would make me look like him, but he had incredible genetics and, on top of that, was juiced to the gills on steroids. What worked for him didn’t work for me.

I experimented and made sporadic gains, but was largely frustrated. But that only made me more obsessed with what it took to get bigger and stronger. I studied exercise science in college and took every seminar I could and read everything I could get my hands on. I watched training videos between classes and tried every workout system under the sun. Many of the lessons came the hard way, but I eventually smartened up and started learning what worked for the genetically average, drug-free lifter.

Sean: How did you get into training people?

Jason: I started when I was in college, at 19 years old. I worked in the University’s weight room during the school year and as an independent trainer during the summers. My business grew so rapidly one summer that I decided to stay home and finish school in New Jersey while taking on new clients. I founded Renegade Strength & Conditioning in 1994, and a year or so later, I opened my own private gym with the money I had made training clients. I was 21.

I never spent a cent on advertising–new clients came to me through word of mouth. My gym was packed, day and night. I would train as many as 100 high school, college, and pro athletes in a single day.

Sean: So what were some of the mistakes you made along the way, in terms of training and nutrition, that you now make sure your clients avoid?

Jason: I made so many mistakes I don’t know where to begin. I used to do what the pro bodybuilders did in the 80s. Monday was chest day, Tuesday was back, Wednesday legs, Thursday shoulders and Friday was arms. I did 15-20 sets per body part and workouts typically lasted two hours.

Another mistake I made was training strictly for the pump. A lot of skinny guys go to the gym just to get a pump with countless sets and reps, and they’re missing the big picture. A pump is simply blood trapped in the muscle. A good pump alone is not synonymous with muscle growth, although it can be a good indicator of anabolic state and does help the advanced lifter who really knows what he is doing. However, you can get a good pump by doing lateral raises with soup cans but that doesn’t mean you’ll build any muscle. You can also get a good pump training with heavy weights and a lower volume of sets, but getting a pump alone should never be the focus of your workouts.

I also did a lot of isolation movements, like leg extensions, cable crossovers, and concentration curls. They do very little to build muscle. Had I known better and stuck with big compound movements like squats, dips and chinups, I would have been much better off.

Nutrition was another thing I ignored in my early years. To achieve any kind of physique or performance goals, you have to eat properly. Back in the day, I didn’t eat anywhere near enough calories to build muscle. Later, I ate too many. Your body can only produce so much lean tissue so fast and if it requires 5,000 calories per day to do that, 10,000 is not going to lead to double the results. It will only make you fat.

Another mistake I fell prey to was the high protein scam. There is no way you need two grams of protein per pound of body weight to build muscle. Most skinny guys don’t even need one gram per pound. Over the last few years, I have cut my protein intake dramatically and have asked my clients to do the same. There have been no negatives whatsoever.

You should aim to get 0.6 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound daily. But that’s about all most guys will probably need. With all this said, I’m not against supplementing with protein if you can’t get the amount you need with whole foods. I like Sun Warrior Protein above all others as it is hypoallergenic, tastes great is easy on the stomach and doesn’t contain any dairy, which as you know isn’t fit for human consumption and can lead to numerous health problems. You can get Sun Warrior at TheUltimateProtein.com

For more of Jason, uncensored, check back here later in the week. I will unveil part 2 of our interview, with more great muscle-building information.

Please leave your questions and comments below.

Written by jasonferruggia · Filed Under Muscle Building | 1 Comment

5 Ways to Burn Fat Fast

June 10, 2009

michelle 5 Ways to Burn Fat Fast Today we have a great guest post from one of the top fat loss experts in the world, John Alvino.

5 Ways to Burn Fat Fast

1) Don’t decrease calories by more than 15% below your maintenance levels. This is one of the keys to maintaining all of your muscle mass during a fat loss phase. If you have a time constraint (weigh in for sport, wet t-shirt contest, etc), you may have to decrease your calories further than 15%. In these rare cases, you can decrease calories as low as 25% below maintenance, but be sure to temporarily increase your calories at regular intervals. This brings up our next point.

2) Do not stay in a caloric deficit for longer than 5 consecutive days. Staying in a caloric deficit for too long leads to a slower metabolism, less glycogen (stored carbohydrates in your muscles that are crucial for athletic performance), and without fail, losses in lean muscle mass. This is easily avoided by “eating up” occasionally to replenish your glycogen stores and give your metabolic rate a much needed boost.

3) Focus on force output during your cardio workouts. Many so-called fat loss “experts” love to say, “You shouldn’t output a lot of force during cardio. You will fatigue and have to stop before you burn enough calories.” These critics are missing the forest for the trees. There are 2 critical points that they are completely disregarding.

First, they are focusing solely on the amount of fat loss that occurs during the cardio workout itself. This is foolish, because if a cardio program is designed correctly, the majority of the fat loss from that cardio will occur AFTER the workout has already been completed. As a matter of fact, it turns out that the post-workout energy expenditure that follows a very intense cardio workout burns much more fat than a long, boring low intensity cardio session ever could.

Second, they are neglecting the fact that low intensity cardio actually encourages the fast twitch muscle fibers to take on characteristics of slower twitch fibers (for those of you who don’t know, it is your fast twitch fibers that provide you with explosive strength and quickness). These are very serious consequences to a high level athlete.

For both of these reasons, I strongly advise you to stay far away from low intensity cardio. So what kind of cardio should you perform? That brings up my next point.

4) It’s no secret that a great way to integrate higher intensity cardio into your routine is high intensity interval training (HIIT). The problem is that there is so much confusion about how to perform HIIT properly, and what work to rest ratios provide maximal results.

I have discovered after years of methodical research that there is no perfect ratio across the board. However, it turns out that each specific type of HIIT exercise does actually have its own optimal work to active rest ratio.

For example, some well respected experts have asserted that the best work to rest ratio is 1 to 3. This is true for a few specific exercises, but for many other important and popular forms of exercise, it is completely wrong.

Let’s take the jumping rope, for example. Can you imagine getting a great workout from jumping rope for 1 minute, and then resting for 3 full minutes? As you can see, a “one size fits all” approach is seriously flawed when it comes to HIIT training. So knowing the exact ratios that best accompany the different forms of exercise is of paramount importance. I have spent years calculating them quite precisely, and when you hit the right combination on the button, the results are incredible.

5) Resistance training is of the utmost importance in any fat loss protocol. However, there are just as many misconceptions about how to properly weight train for fat lass as there are about performing cardio for fat loss. In particular, be very careful not to use a “high rep” approach exclusively. This is very popular among some well known fat loss gurus, and it is the kiss of death for anyone who truly wants permanent and sustainable fat loss. Using high reps exclusively can actually cause you to lose muscle mass during a fat loss phase. This will have a negative impact on your metabolism, thus making it that much harder for you to lose your next pound of fat. Even further, this type of resistance training will cause you to lose strength and power, for the exact same reasons that low intensity cardio does.

A resistance training program is crucial to fat loss, but it must be designed very shrewdly. A specific balance between higher rep exercises and lower rep exercises must be utilized if optimal results are to be seen.

Start employing these tips right away, and you will see immediate and dramatic improvements in your strength, energy, and fat loss results.

Good luck!

John Alvino
——————————-
John Alvino a strength and conditioning specialist, nutrition adviser to Men’s Fitness Magazine and the creator of the most comprehensive fat loss system ever developed. To learn more about John’s amazing How to Get Ripped Abs, fat loss program, click HERE now.

Written by jasonferruggia · Filed Under Fat Loss | 6 Comments

Your Muscle Building and Fat Loss Questions Answered

June 2, 2009

Question: Coach, What is the difference between using chains around your neck on dips versus using a traditional dip belt?
Thanks,
Keith Connel

Answer: Keith, chains around your neck will force your body forward. This will place more stress on the chest. Hanging weights from your waist on a dip belt will keep you more upright and thus put more stress on the triceps.

Question: Hey, I’m finding it hard to get eight hours sleep, six if I’m lucky. With my job and my body clocks all over the place. I have’nt been able to progress these last couple of weeks. Do you think lack of sleep plays a big role in not progressing as my diet and training could’nt be anymore solid. I would appreciate it if you could get back to me as this is the one thing I’m desperate to acheive. Cheers
John Brodie

Answer: John, your lack of sleep is absolutely slowing down your gains in the gym and hampering your ability to build muscle and lose fat. Insufficient sleep will slow down your recovery, decrease your testosterone and insulin sensitivity, elevate your cortisol and possibly lead to a whole host of other problems. In short you will never maximize your ability to get bigger, stronger or leaner without enough sleep. That’s not to say you won’t get some results, but they will always be sub par.

You have to make getting more, high quality sleep a priority. Some things you can do are:

•   Try to go to bed and get up at the same time every day.
•   Keep your room cool and as dark as possible.
•   Stop watching TV at least an hour before bed.
•   Don’t have a TV in the bedroom. The bedroom is for sex and sleep.
•   Keep the lights in your house dim for the hour or two before bed. Get into a ritual of unwinding.
•   Don’t go on the computer before bed.
•   Don’t eat too close to bed time.
•   Start meditating regularly. This usually leads to improved sleep quality.

Question: I was wondering if any modifications are made to the Muscle Gaining Secrets program for older trainees such as myself at a ripe old 35 years of age?

Muscle Gaining Secrets Purchaser,
Luc Readinger

Answer: Luc, there are no changes that you need to make. I’m a few months away from 35 myself and train just as hard as ever and always compete with the college kids in my gym. If you put that nonsense in your head you are setting yourself up for failure. Don’t start making excuses or believing the bullshit before you even get started. At your age you should be able to make outstanding progress and dominate kids in their twenties. In another 5-10 years we’ll talk about age specific modifications.

Question: Whats up Jason, Recently I have switched from whey protein to hemp protein in an effort to cut out all the processed crap from my diet. However I recently heard that drinking hemp protein can suppress testosterone or increase estrogen. Something along those lines. Have you heard anything about this? Ideally I would like to stick with just food but the shakes make preparing food a lot easier especially since I’m trying to gain weight. Thanks for your time.
-Chris Doty

Answer: Chris, I have heard something along those lines but the evidence is not conclusive enough yet. I wouldn’t load up on hemp every day but instead mix it up with pea protein isolate and brown rice protein.

Question: I take weight gain milk(Horley), vitamins(Executive B) and every morning I do a push-up… What do you think Jason?
Mizwan Mahadi

Answer: Mizwan, I might shoot for two or three pushups if I were you.

Question: Hi, I’m in the army and i just need a high calorie burning workout that will help me lose fat, not muscle without using any equipment
Johnny Pacheco

Answer: Johnny, the best thing you can do is run sprints. Nothing will help you lose fat faster. To get some upper body work in try adding in some chin ups and pushups.
You could try something like this:
1a) Sprint- 50 yards
1b) Chin ups- as many as possible
1c) Sprint- 50 yards
1d) Pushups- as many as possible

Rest 60 seconds between sets and repeat five times.

Some other great calorie burning, bodyweight only exercises are burpees, squat thrusts, jump squats, mountain climbers, grasshoppers and bear crawls. Combine them all into a circuit and go through five or six rounds and you will burn a ton of calories.

Please leave your comments below.

Written by jasonferruggia · Filed Under Fat Loss, Muscle Building | 3 Comments

Vegan Muscle Building: Is it Possible?

June 1, 2009

charles coster People always ask me how the heck they could possibly gain muscle on a vegan diet. That’s because they have been brainwashed to believe that without eating a billion grams of protein per day their muscles will shrink faster than their wang in a cold pool. This simply isn’t true. Not even close.

The body can only assimilate so much protein on a daily basis and you can only build muscle so fast. If protein were really the key to building muscle you would see tons of 250 pound behemoths every where you went. They would be sitting next to you at the movies, serving you in restaurants and rubbing elbows with you in the waiting room of the dentists’ office. Because, let’s face it; everyone and their mother drinks protein shakes these days. And if that’s all it took to build muscle there would be a lot more huge dudes walking around.

I’m sure plenty of you have tried this before. You decided to start drinking an extra protein shake or two per day in the hopes of packing on new size. Or you decided to really jack up your protein intake by adding an extra three eggs to your morning omelet and another two chicken breasts to both lunch and dinner. And what happened after a month or two of this? Absolutely nothing. It’s protein, not steroids.

I only wish it were that easy. But as we have all found out the hard (and expensive) way; it isn’t. Total calories are more important than grams of protein when it comes to packing on muscle.

Having said that I will point out that some protein is necessary for those that want to build lean muscle. But this is far less than what the muscle mags and supplement companies would have you believe. Most people will need about .7 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight, daily, to build muscle. More than that doesn’t seem to offer much benefit. So a 180 pound guy looking to gain size would need about 126 grams of protein per day.

Now, you’re telling me you can’t get that on a vegan diet? Lentils, beans and peas are loaded with protein. Almonds and pistachios have 7 grams of protein per serving and both pumpkin and hemp seeds have 11 grams per serving. People usually only count protein grams from animal sources but this is a huge mistake. Vegetables have protein, brown rice has protein and even your morning bowl of oatmeal has 10 grams per cup.

If you eat a decent amount of legumes, nuts, seeds and veggies on a regular basis you should be able to hit your protein mark, no problem. If you can’t, you can always add in a scoop or two of pea, hemp or brown rice protein powder.

After a recent shoulder surgery incapacitated me for a few months I had lost a ton of weight. I gained almost thirty pounds back so far eating nothing but the foods I just mentioned. Although I am still far from my normal I deadlifted 455 for 6 this week. Last night I did heavy military presses, chins, shrugs, face pulls and finished up with 20 Prowler sprints. Some of the meat eating college kids were on the floor after 10, but at almost 35 years old, I just kept on sprinting away long after they had all fallen out.

I’ve had no trouble regaining size or strength on a vegan diet and have never felt better in my life. Trust me; you don’t need meat to succeed and you won’t lose an ounce of size or strength if you decide to go vegan.

Please leave your comments below.

Written by jasonferruggia · Filed Under Muscle Building, Nutrition | 1 Comment

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