Guest Post by Scott Sonnon of Tactfit Commando
We’ve known for years that muscle tissue is highly active metabolically, and it helps us burn more calories during the day. So more muscle equals better fat burn, right? Unfortunately that’s only partly true — and not to the extent we once believed. A pound of muscle is now thought to burn an extra 6 calories per hour (as opposed to the 25 or more per hour we once believed). You’d have to pack on an awful lot of beef to make much difference.
But that’s only one side of the equation. Muscle mass provides a number of other important benefits, foremost of which is better management of insulin. Insulin is your “storage” hormone. Its job is to transport fuel into your cells. The higher your ratio of fat to lean tissue, the less sensitive your lean tissue becomes to insulin. Basically, when your body fat percentage creeps too high and insulin comes knocking, your lean mass stops answering the door. If you see a vicious cycle in all of this, you’re right!
One way to encourage your muscles to start answering the door again is through resistance exercise aimed at… …continue reading.
If you know me you know I like to keep things simple. I’m a big believer in the 80/20 rule. Focusing on too many things and making too many changes at once is always a recipe for disaster and will undoubtedly lead to lackluster results.
So when people ask me for some tips on how to get lean I tell them two things- diet and sprint. Pretty simple stuff.
Diet is really 80% of getting lean but that’s another topic entirely. Today we’re simply gonna focus on hill sprints for fat loss. Mainly because not enough people are doing them and many of those who are, are doing them all wrong.
If you are new to sprinting you need to take it easy. I mean reeeeaaaally easy. If the last time you ran a sprint was the week before senior prom you need to be very cautious or you’ll probably get hurt.
If this describes you I’d start with hill sprints. Why hill sprints? Well, firstly, because Walter Payton did them. And most of us should strongly consider doing whatever Walter Payton did just because he was that awesome. Because he was my favorite athlete growing up (along with Michael… …continue reading.
Since there was quite a bit of interest in and positive feedback on Chad’s fat loss system I decided to get him to write a quick article for us today on the top 5 fat loss myths.
Check it out…
Fat Loss Myth #1: Low intensity cardio is great for burning fat and boosting endurance.
Jogging for an hour is a complete waste of time. So is any form of cardio that forces you to do the same repetitive movement over and over. When your muscles have to continuously contract for 30, 45, or 60 minutes, that energy has to come from somewhere. The body is stubborn and doesn’t want to burn fat for energy so it eats up your muscle instead. This immediately kills your metabolism and it robs your body of strength and athleticism.
The key to quickly getting ripped is by doing exercises that stimulate your metabolism all day long. Research by Tremblay shows that high intensity cardio is significantly more effective than low intensity cardio because it forces your body to keep burning fat and calories after you stop training. And research by Tabata proves that just a few minutes of intense cardio will boost… …continue reading.
Jason Ferruggia: What are your top three fat burning nutrition tips?
Chad Waterbury: The first step is to feed your body more nutrients and fewer calories. There’s really no way to get around the fact that burning fat requires you to give your body fewer calories than it needs. But where people really mess up is with their food choices. Most guys don’t get enough of certain key nutrients to feed their anabolic hormones even when they’re eating to bulk.
So when they drastically cut calories their metabolism shuts down because they’re getting even fewer nutrients than they were before. But if they simply drop low-quality foods and replace them with nutrient rich foods, they’ll keep all their muscle. For example, eat a serving of fresh blueberries instead of rice at lunch. Or have steamed vegetables instead of a baked potato at dinner. These two changes will give your muscles and metabolism more nutrients with fewer calories.
The second step is to eat every three hours and frontload your calories. Breakfast should always be your biggest meal of the day; lunch is second biggest; dinner is smallest. Throw a few snacks in there, such as an apple, mixed nuts,… …continue reading.
About three or four years ago Chad Waterbury and I connected for the first time through our mutual friend, Alwyn Cosgrove. Over several Jack & Red Bulls at a bar in Santa Monica, we discussed training for hours on end. Despite the fact that we went into the meeting with seemingly very different views and theories, we concluded that we agreed much more than we disagreed. Since that night Chad’s become one of my good friends and we discuss training on a weekly basis. He’s one of the guys I trust most and I’m always interested in hearing what he’s been experimenting with as of late.
Since summer’s in full swing and a large number of people are in fat loss mode I grabbed Chad last week for a few minutes to sit down and share some of his top fat burning tips.
Here’s how it went…
Jason Ferruggia: Chad, the majority of people reading this site want to get bigger and stronger but many of them would also like to be leaner as well. The problem, however, is that when most people embark on a fat burning phase the first thing that happens is they start losing… …continue reading.
In part 6 of my interview with Craig we discuss how I set up programs in order to maximize muscle building, strength & power development, conditioning and overall tissue and joint health.
Craig Ballantyne: Can you walk us through a typical Renegade style training session. Is it always goingto be total body training with conditioning at the end?
Jason Ferruggia: More or less. We don’t really isolate muscles and every workout involves the total body. There may be an upper or lower focus on certain days but we are still using exercises and drills that involve the entire body for the most part.
Everyone gets in ten minutes early and foam rolls and stretches first before the dynamic warm up begins. I know some people are vehemently opposed to static stretching and believe that it’s unnatural and does nothing. They’re probably right. BUT… if you have a guy who can’t get into the bottom position of a squat without his lower back rounding, often times five to ten minutes of stretching the hip flexors and other tight muscle groups may be a quick fix. It’s not a long term solution and there are other… …continue reading.
Here’s the next installment of my interview with CB…
Craig Ballantyne: Now, I know you don’t specialize in fat loss, per se, but over the 15 plus years of training people, what have you noticed and what lessons have you learned from training athletes that might help average people and some of my readers lose fat more efficiently?
Jason Ferruggia: Athletes that train intelligently always seem to be able to get down to single digit body fat fairly easily. Then you have the average guy going to the gym struggling and he’s always stuck at 20 or 18 percent body fat.
He’s doing the same things and making the same mistakes a lot of average gym goers make…
He’s on the treadmill, the stair climber, the elliptical. As you know, cardio is very ineffective for most people. A lot of power athletes, a field athlete like a football player, for example, can’t afford to do traditional cardio or steady state aerobic activity because that will pretty much destroy his fast twitch muscle fibers and make him slower and less explosive.
They really don’t even have that option, first of all.
They’re forced to just stick with high intensity training… …continue reading.
Here is part 2 of the recent interview I did for Craig Ballantyne. Click HERE for part 1.
Craig Ballantyne: Tell us a little bit about some of the unique conditioning that you do? Obviously you’ve got the prowler, you guys do sprints, but what else do you have in Renegade Gym that you guys do?
Jason Ferruggia: First of all, it should be noted that not everyone needs to do conditioning. Typically the most explosive athletes do the least amount of conditioning. These would usually be throwers. But if you want to be in shape or play a sport you are going to need to do some conditioning. The key is not to overdo it. Or do it just for the sake of doing it.
As I said, we do zero cardio. Traditional cardio goes against evolution. You weren’t designed to do that and it’s counterproductive; meaning it causes cortisol release, over use injuries and saps your power.
As far as the methods we DO use- the prowler is one of the BEST things you can do. We use that quite a bit. You really have to experience it to even appreciate it. You do… …continue reading.
Let’s say you’re training someone who’s fat and weak but their goal is to get lean. They aren’t obese but they have 25-35 pounds to lose. Pretty much like every average American. Since fat loss is the goal you might be inclined to put them on a typical “fat loss workout.” This means that they would do a total body, circuit style workout, alternating upper, lower and full body exercises with moderately high reps (8-20) and minimal rest periods (0-60).
Sounds like a decent plan.
Except for the fact that they are too weak to get anything out of it. Their heart rate won’t get elevated anywhere near as high as it should and they’ll hardly break a sweat.
Why? Like I said, they’re too weak. When you’re too weak you can’t get much out of bodyweight exercises and the weights you lift are hardly heavy enough to do anything. Weak people can’t recruit anywhere near the same amount of muscle fibers that strong people can. Therefore the same number of sets and reps is nowhere near as taxing for them.
While it is completely counterintuitive, what this person needs to do is actually get strong first. They should actually… …continue reading.
Guest Post by Brad Pilon
There are three main keys to losing fat and gaining muscle. If you’re missing any of these you will most likely fail in your attempts to build a lean muscular body. So what are they?
1) Eat Less Calories than you burn off
2) Resistance Training
3) Eating enough protein to maintain muscle mass
That’s as short and sweet as I can put it.
Any diet can work as long as it gets you to eat less calories than you burn off. The key is to find a diet that suits your personality and your lifestyle. If you’re like me you don’t have time to spend on diet rules and focusing on good foods and bad foods, and what to eat and what not to eat, and meal timing and all of that.
The diet that will work for you will most likely be the one with the least amount of rules, or in fact no rules at all but rather just provide a guideline or two. For me that diet is Eat Stop Eat. It is the simplest nutrition program I have ever come across. There is only one guideline, and that… …continue reading.
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