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 growth. Why is it important to improve insulin sensitivity? Well, if your muscles don’t answer the door, guess who will… Yep, your fat cells are always ready with a warm welcome.

To top it all off, long slow cardio can actually cause you to LOSE muscle because it increases your level of cortisol. If you focus instead on short bursts of high intensity effort using exercises that target the entire body in all its ranges of motion, you can actually BUILD muscle while you do your cardio! Fat burning just got easier, and a lot more fun.

Turn Your Body Into A Fat Burning Machine ( for 51% off until Thursday)

To check out Scott’s Tactfit Commando program Click HERE.

Related posts:

1. Quick Tips to Build Muscle & Burn Fat
2. Your Muscle Building and Fat Loss Questions Answered
3. 5 Ways to Burn Fat Fast

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 Jordan) I started running hill sprints way back in the 80’s when I found out that that’s what “Sweetness” did (and that poster, pictured above, was on my bedroom wall for years. You see how ripped Payton was?). When I found out a few years later that they were a major part of Jerry Rice’s off season training regimen, their greatness was reaffirmed in my mind.

Hill sprints place your body in a safer position because of the angle, so there is far less impact. The risk of pulling a hammy or popping an Achilles or something in your knee is greatly reduced. So, for most of us, this is the way to go. Another great thing about hill sprints versus other fat loss methods is that they also build muscle at the same time. Can’t really say that for the stairmaster, can you?

Now, before you get started you should warm up properly. Wearing some neoprene knee sleeves might be a good idea just to keep the knees warm. I recommend starting with about five to ten minutes of low intensity drills to get the body ready for the task at hand. A good warm up might consist of:

•    Jumping jacks

Tell me that's not the coolest picture ever...

•    Flings
•    Seal jumps
•    Ali shuffle
•    Low pogo jumps
•    High pogo jumps
•    Prisoner squats
•    Gate swings
•    Wide outs
•    Leg swings- front, back, side to side
•    Walking lunges
•    High knees
•    Butt kicks
•    Tuck jumps
•    Lateral shuffling
•    Skipping
•    Etc.

The nice thing about sprinting up a hill is that you don’t require as much of a warm up. After hitting 5-10 minutes of the drills listed above start with some lower intensity sprints. Do one at about 60%, then 70%, another at 80%, one more at 90% and then you’re ready to go. For the most part I recommend that your sprint work be done at around 95-97%. Very rarely should you go all out at 100%. I realize that the difference between 95-97% and 100% may seem very small but an athlete in tuned with his body can tell the difference. And keeping the intensity just that much lower makes a big difference in overall recovery and CNS fatigue.

Again, if it’s your first sprint session in years you need to start way easier than you think. I recommend no more than FIVE sprints of no more than 40 yards the first day. Some times I see coaches or trainers recommend starting with ten 40-50 yard sprints. When I see this it’s immediately obvious that they haven’t trained too many people and haven’t done this themselves. Or they have been sprinting for years and forgot what its like to be a beginner. Beginners need to be extremely cautious and should start at only about 85-90% for the first week or so and keep the total number of sprints very low.

See how you feel after the first session and give it a go again in about five days. Slowly increase the intensity over time. Rest periods can be as short or as long as you need them to be. You want to keep your heart rate elevated but you don’t want to rest so little that your form starts getting sloppy and you risk injury.

If you were training for speed you might be resting up to five minutes between each set. But since today’s topic is hill sprints for fat loss try to keep the rest periods a bit lower. We don’t need complete CNS recovery here.

The next thing we need to discuss is proper running mechanics. This is where most people get it all wrong. A couple weeks ago I went down to the field with my long time friend, Mike DeSanti (the creator of the recipes in the Triple Threat Muscle nutrition guide and our upcoming recipe book) and we ran some sprints. Since a qualified coach had never taught Mike how to sprint before he was just running like he always had without much thought involved.

I wanted him to feel the difference so I let him do about five or six sprints the old way. Then I taught him to run properly. His speed increased dramatically on the next one and when he hit the 50-yard line he broke out into hysterical laughter.

“I can’t believe I just learned how to sprint at thirty years old!”

“That was awesome!”

“I never moved like that in my life!”

“I was like a gazelle!”

He could barely get the words out through the laughter and since he was cracking up so hard I started dying, myself. We laughed uncontrollably the entire way back to the goal line and it continued throughout the rest of our workout.

Mike was so blown away by the difference that proper running mechanics made that he couldn’t contain himself.

So what did I show Mike that most people don’t know?

Since this is not a discussion on maximal speed training or mastering the 40 yard or 100 meter dash we won’t concern ourselves with the start so much. Instead, to be safe, we will use flying starts, meaning you start by running at less than your maximal speed and work your way up to top speed over the course of 15-20 yards.

•    Starting from the top down, the face must be relaxed. Do night clench your jaw or make any crazy faces. Relax.

•    Keep the chest up and shoulders back and down.

•    No side to side rotation of the pelvis, torso, shoulder girdle is allowed.

•    Hips remain forward toward the finish line at all times.

•    Arms should be bent ninety degrees with the hands open (no clenched fists or flailing, limp wrists).

•    When you are running the arms must pump vigorously, forward and backward. NEVER LET THE ARMS CROSS THE MIDLINE OF THE BODY. Only forward and backward. Little kids run with their arms side to side. Don’t do that or we will all make fun of you.

•    Think of pulling yourself through the air by driving your arms back as fast and hard as you can. The hands come up to a level even with the face and they come down and cross your pocket on the way back (but no further; don’t have them swinging way behind you).

•    Drive the knees high and be sure that the foot strikes directly under your body; not out in front of you (although, on a hill this may be slightly different depending on the incline).

•    Only the front portion of the foot should strike the ground; the heel should never make contact.

•    When the ball of the foot makes contact with the ground think of yourself as an animal pawing at the ground and rapidly pulling it behind you.

•    As Charlie Francis said, running takes place on the ground, sprinting takes place above it. If you do it right you should feel minimal impact or stress and should feel like you are flying effortlessly. If you’re taking a lot of pounding and it feels like a lot of work, you’re doing something wrong and should consider having someone watch or video tape you for some feedback.

What I listed above are basically the instructions for flat ground sprints but can easily be applied to the hill. A few angles will change here and there but for the most part, if you follow those recommendations you’ll be ahead of the pack and your sprints will be a lot safer and faster.

Just in case you aren’t convinced that hill sprinting isn’t the way to go just yet, consider that the current 49ers  head coach, Mike Singletary, who played most of his career with Walter Payton and had several outings against Jerry Rice, has taken a page out of the legends books and added hill sprints to the teams off season training regimen.

“There’s something about the hill,” Singletary told reporters back in mid-March 2009, after the 49ers first minicamp and the hill was on full display for the first time. “It’s beautiful to look at but what it’s going to do for our guys is it’s going to bring about something that you can’t really get in the weight room, something that you really can’t get on the track.”

“All the guys that I know that worked out on a hill, they were a cut above some of the other competition around the league and they had a long playing careers,” Singletary said. “So I’m excited about the hill and it just adds another dimension to our workout.”

So make like Payton and Rice and the entire current 49ers team and go find yourself a hill and start sprinting…

PS. Speaking of the 49ers, their Strength & Conditioning Coach, Duane Carlise, just released a new DVD set on training for football. Check it out by clicking HERE now.

And then check out this video of the great Walter Payton (they show him sprinting the hill at 2:24)

Please leave your comments below.

Related posts:

1. When to do Conditioning For Fast Fat Loss
2. Athletic Fat Loss & Three Days vs. Four
3. My Top 5 Muscle Building & Fat Loss Tips

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 your anaerobic and aerobic conditioning.

Solution: Do short, quick circuits of body weight exercises such as split jacks, jumping jacks, and burpees.

Fat Loss Myth #2:  You should lift for high reps to failure to burn fat.
It’s easy to think that lifting weights for a ton of reps is making your body burn fat, but it’s not, and research tells us why. You see, the key to really cranking up your metabolism hinges on recruiting as many muscle fibers as possible with each set by following the law of Henneman’s size principle. When you do high rep training you’re only working the smallest, weakest muscle fibers that have little to no impact on boosting your metabolism. You must target all your muscle fibers when you lift weights or you’ll never get results.

Solution:  Do full body circuits that consist of an upper body pull, an upper body push, and a squat or lunge because they’ll stimulate all your muscle fibers. Also, keep the rest periods short and accelerate all lifts.

Fat Loss Myth #3: You don’t need to get stronger to get leaner.
The stronger you are, the more muscle fibers you can recruit. Stimulating all your muscle fibers with each set catapults the metabolic cost of your workouts. Metabolic cost is a measure exercise scientists use to determine how many calories you’re burning through exercise. The higher the metabolic cost, the better.

Furthermore, recent research by McBride et al proves that getting stronger makes you run faster. And the faster you can move, the more fat you’ll burn through exercise. That’s because research by Mazetti et al shows that people who lift fastest burn the most calories.

Solution: Lift weights that don’t allow more than 12 reps per set. For body weight exercise circuits, move as quickly as possible to stimulate your metabolism.

Myth #4: Just eat less and you’ll lose weight.
Your metabolism is primarily stimulated by nutrients, not just calories. When you drastically cut calories it brings your metabolism to a screeching halt because your body is not getting the essential nutrients it needs: amino acids, vitamins, minerals, omega-3s, etc.  If you just eat less, the only thing you’ll lose is muscle, and this destroys your metabolism so you end up fatter than you were before. Sound familiar?

Solution: Replace low-quality foods such as bread, pasta, and rice with nutrient-dense foods such as berries, green vegetables, and fish. Be sure the berries and vegetables are organic (preferably from a farmer’s market) and only eat wild fish, not farm-raised, since they all contain the most nutrients.

Myth #5: You must workout every day to see results.
Training every day doesn’t allow your body the time it needs to recover, so you get overtrained very quickly. You know what happens when you’re overtrained? Fat-storing hormones flood your system! Now you know why the people you see in the gym every day aren’t getting results. Plus, being overtrained zaps your motivation and makes you more susceptible to illness and injury.

Solution: Train no more than four days per week. If four workouts per week doesn’t change your body fast, your program stinks!

Today is the last day to get Chad’s new Body of F.I.R.E. fat loss system at the introductory discounted rate. Check it out by clicking HERE now.

Related posts:

1. Fat Burning Tips- An Interview with Chad Waterbury
2. Fat Burning Nutrition- Chad Waterbury Interview Pt. 2
3. My Top 5 Muscle Building & Fat Loss Tips

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, or a scoop of protein with a handful of berries. Take one tablespoon of liquid fish oil with breakfast and dinner. There are a few other supplements I like, depending on your goals.

The third element for burning fat is to feed your body amino acids and glucose around your workouts. Take five to 10 grams of branched chain amino acids directly before a workout. Immediately after, take another 5-10 grams of BCAAs with a scoop of Sun Warrior protein and ½ cup of organic raisins. These simple steps will boost your metabolism, improve your performance, and shorten your recovery time. All in all, that equates to faster fat loss.

Jason Ferruggia: Can you tell our readers a little bit about your Body of F.I.R.E. program, that you just released today and what kind of people you have used it with?

Chad Waterbury: The Body of F.I.R.E. is a complete training and nutrition program that will strip body fat off faster than anything I’ve ever created. The training component is based around Full-body, Intense, Resistance Exercise – hence the acronym. It was designed for athletes who couldn’t afford to lose muscle or strength in pursuit of boosting their explosive strength endurance. But the program is just as effective for non-athletes.

I’ve put everyone from professional fighters to weekend warriors on the program with amazing results. My client, Jon, lost 40 pounds of fat on the program. And not an ounce of muscle was lost in the process. Very few fat loss programs can make that claim.

I also put Ralek Gracie on the program to prepare him for his recent win over the legendary Sakuraba. The cool part about Ralek is that he actually gained muscle on the program since we had a little room to move with regard to his weigh in.

The Body of F.I.R.E. program leaves no stone unturned. It consists of four, full-body workouts per week that combine fast, multiplanar body weight cardio circuits, strength training circuits, and cardio strength exercise pairings. The progression plan is unlike any other to ensure that you’re constantly improving your performance. An extra set or rep, an extension in the work interval, or a drop in the rest periods are a few examples.

I also cover mobility drills, stretches, and a complete nutrition plan with specific guidelines to make it work for your goals. And the exercise guide has vivid, high resolution pictures with tips and technique guidelines so you’re always doing each exercise with perfect form.

Of all the programs I’ve created, this is the one I’ve worked the longest on, and it’s the one I’m most proud of.

Jason Ferruggia: Awesome. Thanks for the interview,  my friend. And before we go, do you want to comment on the outcome of that 100 meter dash we had on the beach? Na, we’ll save that for next time, I think…

To check out Chad’s new program click HERE now.

Related posts:

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2. Top 5 Fat Loss Myths- By Chad Waterbury
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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 muscle faster than King Kong Bundy pinned S.D. Jones at WrestleMania I (which I was at, BTW) How can this be avoided?

Chad Waterbury: You’re right. I’ve lost count how many guys I’ve seen who’ve lost almost half the muscle they gained once they try to get six-pack abs. It’s not easy to build muscle, but it’s definitely easy to lose it.

There are three keys to avoiding this. First, stimulate as many muscle fibers as possible with full-body workouts comprised of strength and cardio strength exercises that are performed at top speed.

Second, follow a systematic progression plan in order to make your body do more work over time.

Third, feed your muscles the nutrients it needs at the right times.

JF: What are the three biggest mistakes you see people making when trying to lose fat?

CW: The first mistake is performing long duration cardio at a low intensity. Nothing wastes muscle tissue faster than jogging for an hour. When muscles are forced to continuously contract for 45 minutes or an hour, that energy has to come from somewhere. The body is very stubborn and doesn’t want to use fat for energy because it’s much easier to break down muscle tissue instead. This is why marathon runners are skinny and weak.

Second, when people try to lose fat they drop too many calories, too fast. Your anabolic hormones are fed by certain, key nutrients. When people go on a low-calorie diet they end up giving their muscles fewer nutrients for support and recovery. This quickly puts the body in a very catabolic state.

The third biggest mistake guys tend to make is choosing the wrong exercises and workouts to lose fat. Most people end up lifting light weights for a ton of reps. This is the exact opposite of what they should be doing because they’re not recruiting the muscle fibers they’re trying to keep: the biggest, strongest ones.

Think about it. When people try to burn fat they instinctively do the three worst things possible to maintain muscle. I’ve seen guys lose 10 pounds of muscle in a matter of weeks when they combine low-intensity cardio, high rep weight training, and a low calorie diet. This is a travesty.

JF: What are your top three fat burning tips? Actually, let’s start with three for training and then we’ll go into three for nutrition.

CW: The first step is to make your cardio training short and intense. Tabata’s research taught us that high intensity cardio is the way to go because you’ll boost your anaerobic and aerobic power at the same time, and you’ll stimulate your metabolism to burn calories long after you leave the gym. Low-intensity cardio only burns calories while you’re doing it. High intensity cardio stimulates your metabolism to keep burning calories long after you stop.

Next, for every other workout it’s important to lift weights that are heavy enough to recruit your biggest, strongest muscle fibers. A 6-10 rep maximum is enough to get the job done when you accelerate the lift. There are two reasons why this is important. First, you’ll keep the muscle you have because you’re recruiting all of your muscle fibers. As I’ve mentioned in my books and articles, when you recruit the largest muscle fibers you’re also recruiting all of the other muscle fibers because of the size principle. As the saying goes: if you don’t use it, you lose it. Second, when heavy weights are performed in a full-body circuit with short rest periods, it drastically increases the metabolic cost of a workout. That’s essential for burning fat. But you can’t do much heavy training while cutting fat, so that’s why the next step is so important.

Third, you must perform cardio and cardio strength exercises at top speed.  There are no typical cardio exercises in my world. Instead of jogging on a treadmill I have my clients perform a circuit of, say, split jacks, jumping jacks, and burpees for multiple rounds as fast as possible. Then I have them do exercise pairings that don’t require a lot of weight, but still recruit all your muscle fibers when performed at top speed. I call this “cardio strength” training. A good example is the kettlebell swing and push-up pairing. Start with 13 swings, then immediately drop to the floor and do 13 push-ups. Jump back to your feet and do 12 swings followed by 12 push-ups. Then do 11 swings and 11 push-ups. Continue with this sequence until you reach one rep of each exercise.

Tomorrow I’ll be back atcha with part 2 where Chad discusses his top fat burning nutrition tips, shares some real life examples of what he’s doing with his current clients and reveals who won when he and I raced in a hundred meter dash…

Related posts:

1. Fat Burning Nutrition- Chad Waterbury Interview Pt. 2
2. Top 5 Fat Loss Myths- By Chad Waterbury
3. My Top 5 Muscle Building & Fat Loss Tips

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.

Vida has to stretch before squatting or her butt tucks under.

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 things you should be doing to correct this, but if a little foam rolling and static stretching allows someone to squat correctly without going in to lumbar flexion I don’t see the problem with it. And when you only have 12-16 weeks to work with an athlete who is getting tested on squats you have to use quick fixes quite often and can’t always take the long term approach.

But, back to the question…

Like I said, we would use the foam roller for the IT band, quads, hamstrings, glutes, hip flexors, back, etc. Guys will do static stretching after that, if need be. Then we’ll get into a full body dynamic warm up, which will be some basic calisthenics stuff, some jumping jacks, seal jumps, flings, overhead squats, shoulder dislocations, some isometric poses and bridging type stuff. Just stuff to fire up the CNS and some muscle activation drills.

Then we’ll often start the majority of workouts with some type of movement efficiency drills or an explosive power exercise like a jump or a throw. I really like box jumps a lot, so maybe we’ll work up to a one rep box jump or do multiple sets of 3-5 reps. Other great jump variations are hurdles, broad jumps, vertical jumps and depth jumps for more advanced guys.

After that we will usually hit one big barbell exercise for maximal strength work, usually in the range of 1-5 reps. Over the course of many sets we will work up to a top end set for the day. This is not a true, death rep, grinding max, but a real solid, heavy set. The best you can do that day with picture perfect form and no breakdown in technique.

This is always hard to control because young guys always want to push themselves way too hard, way too fast. When you continually push too close to failure and go too heavy, allowing your form to break down while grinding out reps, you always end up getting weaker and/or injured.

This is hard to learn and something most people don’t want to learn. It usually takes someone making the mistake time after time and getting weaker and injured often for this to finally sink in.

Sometimes the maximal strength exercise will be done on it’s own or it will be part of a two or three exercise super set or circuit. For example, while working up to a top end set on a military press we might alternate that with sets of pull ups and maybe even glute hams as well. If we do the maximal strength movement alone we’ll hit the pull ups and glute hams and maybe some abs as a circuit with minimal rest afterwards.

And we almost always do a finisher. So after the strength training is done we might push the Prowler, drag sleds, do some burpees, do some battling ropes, or maybe high rep swings or snatches. Something like that for about 5-10 minutes, tops. This is a great way to get some conditioning in without having any negative impact on your size, strength or power gains.

If we have a typical skinny hardgainer whose primary goal is to get bigger and stronger we will skip the power exercise at the beginning and the finisher at the end. Their workout would usually just consist of a push, a pull and a lower body exercise. They’d hit a few good sets of each of those then go home. Although, in the age of ADD, sometimes you even have to add something else in just to keep these guys interested. It’s not in their best interest but they expect and want to be doing something a little crazy. Sometimes you have to walk the fine line of getting optimal results and keeping people entertained.

Like my friend, NCAA strength coach, Joe Kenn said, “In this day and age you gotta keep these fools engaged.”

Craig Ballantyne: Very nice. We haven’t really covered too much beginner stuff so I’m glad you touched on that. What are some tips you could give to beginners our there?

Jason Ferruggia: Again, like I said, they should stick with a very basic program consisting of three exercises- push, pull, lower body. Three exercises per workout is all they need. First and foremost, learn to control your own bodyweight. Get really good at bodyweight exercises. You should start with inverted rows, pushups, bodyweight squats, things like that. After a few months of that get proficient with the big exercises and master your form on presses, squats and deads.

I think everyone should learn the big, basic exsercises, and the best way to learn those is to do them three days a week for three to five sets of about five or six reps. You want to keep the reps low just because you learn technique better that way. When you do higher reps your form tends to break down.  Your stabilizer muscles tend to give out before the prime movers. You learn bad form that way.

And in the future, when you progress beyond the novice level, just make sure you always remember to pick stuff up off the ground, lift stuff over your head, carry heavy stuff and do bodyweight exercises wherever and whenever possible.

Also, always try to make PROGRESS at every workout. Try to do more reps, do more weights, or if it’s a bodyweight exercise move on to the next level. This doesn’t have to be every exercise at every training session, but over time you need to make consistent improvements. Just make sure you’re making progress from week to week or month to month.  A year from now, if you’re still doing the same weights, obviously you’re not going to get anywhere no matter what your goal is.

Craig Ballantyne: I like the advice of always trying to set the personal best in the training sessions and stuff like that. What about top three tips you would give for an ADVANCED person that’s maybe stuck at a fat loss plateau or something? Someone that’s not doing a real generic cardio workout, but kind of has a good idea of what they’re doing, but needs to really step it up.

Jason Ferruggia: If someone hits a fat loss plateau it’s usually diet related. If the diet is in check and every thing looks perfect that’s when I start doing some kind of carb cycling or calorie cycling. If you jack up their calories for a few days, that will kind of get their metabolism cranking again and get them out of that plateau.

If someone is stuck at a plateau, we might say “For the next three days we’re going to increase your calories by one and half times,” maybe even double.  You’ll find that they will actually lose weight.  Some rare people may gain weight for a couple days, but then during the following days after that, they will always lose weight.

So, something like that definitely helps. Going forward they may have to do that every 3-5 days, meaning that they will have to have a high carb, high calorie day.

As far as training goes, probably the biggest mistake an advanced guy makes, and I make myself, is never backing off.  You need to be smarter the more advanced you get. You have to listen to your body. You need to take more time off, take a planned week off here and there, cycle your poundages, warm up more, maybe use slightly higher reps.

These are things that sound counter intuitive for fat loss or not specifically geared towards fat loss, I guess. This advice is usually geared toward guys looking to build muscle and get stronger. But if you’re beat up in the gym and not making progress, you’re not getting stronger. In my opinion that’s going to hold your fat loss back because you’re not making any progress or performance gains. Remember, everything is based on improving your performance. If you do that everything improves. So you need to make sure that you’re not over training, you’re not over doing it, and you’re not being overzealous.

More is NOT always better. A lot of times, less is more. So, doing an extra ten sets in the gym is not necessarily going to get you leaner. You’re going to get leaner through your diet, through getting stronger, and through proper conditioning methods, which will involve sprinting or interval training.

You just need to be safe and be smart in the gym, otherwise that will hold you back. When you’re beat up you can’t train or if you can’t train optimally you can’t build muscle or lose fat optimally.

Please leave your comments below.

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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 methods like plyos, sprints, agility training, and things like that. So, they’re doing that kind of stuff and they’re getting way leaner than the guy who is sitting on the bike for 40 minutes a day. That should tell you something right there. That kind of stuff, the latter, is not that effective.

So, like I said earlier, I have everyone train like an athlete. We only do high intensity stuff because that’s really where the results are at. You’re going to get the fastest results with the high intensity stuff.

You can also do low intensity stuff as a recovery method on off days. It’s that in between, middle ground stuff that really sucks for most people. That’s where you get the elevated cortisol and the muscle loss.

As I’ve said a million times, sprinting is the most effective form of fat loss training there is. But it’s hard work. Most people would rather sit on a bike or even do a bunch of bodyweight and kettlebell circuits for an hour straight long before they would ever dream of going out to the track or sprinting up a hill. It’s their loss. I’m not gonna hold anyone’s hand and walk them to the nearest hill.

Even in my own gym, for example, I tell people to sprint all the time. How many of them do so? Very few. What’s sad is that some of the guys in their twenties have ignored my advice for months or years while two guys who are 47 have regularly started hill sprinting and another guy who’s 37 and just started with us a few months back is already out on the hill. Every generation seems to be getting weaker and weaker, but again- another story for another day.

Jessica Alba knows the benefits of playing yourself into shape

Another great way to lose fat and improve your conditioning is to just play yourself into shape. People who stay active and have lots of physical hobbies like surfing, rock climbing, pick up basketball, beach volleyball or whatever, are always in pretty good shape and they don’t think of it as exercise. It’s not tedious. It’s just you’re out there having fun like you used to do as a kid. So grab a ball of some sort and start playing.

Craig Ballantyne: The last time we spoke you were talking about how you moved to almost everyone to more of a three day per week training program…

Why don’t you tell us a little about why that is?

Jason Ferruggia: I love to train, so I could train seven days a week if over training wasn’t an option. However, not everyone has the luxury of training whenever and as often as they want. Most guys are lucky if they can get in three workouts per week. Some get four, but its rare that the average guy will train more than four times per week. Nor should he. Well, let me clarify that. He shouldn’t strength train more than four times per week. You can always add in some other conditioning work or sprints and things like that.

I do know a lot of guys like to train four days a week better than three, if they have the choice.  So I experimented for the last couple of years with a lot of guys I coach at the gym and online to see what would get the better results, four days or three days. We went back and forth for a while just trying a lot of different things. I was kind of set in my ways with a system that I had been using for years, because it gets outstanding results.  But I said, “Let me try some different things here and see what’s what.” Just to be sure, ya know?

On the four day split what I often found was that if you’re going to do four days you really have to limit it to three hard days. I feel like it always ends up becoming three and a half days with a fourth easier day on a Saturday.  This has to be kind of a down day where you’re just doing glute ham raises, some neck and grip, some calves and abs, something like that.

Four, hard big workouts per week is A LOT mentally and physically for most people to get up for. And it’s hard to recover from.

So, if you have a big bench press day, a squat day, a military press day, and a dead lift day, that’s four big workouts in a week with assistance exercises. I find that’s a lot for people to handle. You can do it for about two or three weeks, but then I do find that people start to burn out. For me it’s usually only two weeks. It depends how strong you are, you’ll burn out faster the stronger you are.

Also, another problem with the four days was that people weren’t always making it to every workout. People have real jobs, a busy schedule, family commitments and a life. So with four days per week people weren’t always able to get there. Three days just seemed to be more practical for the majority of people.

Four days just wasn’t realistic for a lot of people and the motivation wasn’t always there also. People coming three days were always excited to be there. Sometimes with four days people start to get overexposed and not as motivated by that fourth day.  I like people to be motivated every time they’re in the gym.

It’s always nice to have a day off between high intensity workouts as well, not just for your muscles but for your nervous system, your mind and your joints. That way you’re always fresh mentally and physically, and you get that with three days. That’s why we ended up sticking with three days and it’s always what I seem to go back to.

Three days always has seemed to get the best results for the majority of people I’ve trained. Four days is only beneficial when you have outstanding recovery ability, a lot of time, low stress levels; and even then I still think that fourth day should be an easier day with less demanding exercises. If you do that you can get away with it. But for most people, if they only have the time, they should opt to get outside and sprint on that fourth day as it will give you a lot better results in the end.

Please leave your comments below.

PS. For a comprehensive athletic muscle building system, check out TripleThreatMuscle.com.

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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 10 to 20 of those with minimal rest and it’s gonna be far superior to any kind of cardio machine you could possibly do. That’s a great finisher or can be used on off days. There’s no eccentric component so you really don’t get sore from it.

How far should you push the prowler? It really depends on how much room you have. Anywhere from 20-50 yards should be good for most people. You’ll know when you’ve had enough. Trust me.

On top of that we’ll drag sleds pretty much the same way, same parameters. With the sled you can do a variety of different drags.

We’ll also do high rep kettle bell swings and snatches. I’ve recently become a big fan of snatches. Well, I was always a big fan of snatches, but recently became a very big fan of kettlebell snatches. In the past I always thought they were a good exercise but nothing special. Recently I’ve fallen in love with them, however. A lot of it has to do with a new technique I use to do them.

It can be somewhat difficult to master but once you really get tight form down on the snatch, it’s a very fun exercise to do. I am definitely a big fan of tight snatches… so to speak.

Swings and snatches for high reps or timed sets are awesome as a finisher. You could do 3-4 sets of 10-25 reps or just set a clock for 8-10 minutes and try to get as many reps as possible. Then each week you would try to get more reps in the same amount of time with the same weight.

The battling ropes are great if someone has any kind of knee injury, if they can’t push the prowler or they can’t sprint. There’s very little stress with the battling ropes so they allow people with any kind of injuries to get a great workout in. I like to do 4-6 sets of 20-30 seconds of work as a finisher. And there are numerous patterns you can use with the ropes.

My all time FAVORITE are hill sprints. I love to do hill sprints. I recommend hill sprints for everyone who needs to lose body fat.  They’re awesome and you don’t need any special equipment at all; just a hill. The reason I like hill sprints better than flat ground sprints are for the simple fact that they are less injurious, a little easier on the body and you don’t need to warm up as long.

But any kind of sprint; the prowler, sprints with a sled, sprints on flat ground and sprints on a hill are definitely going to be far superior to any cardio machine you could do.

The human body was simply not designed for long duration, repetitive, steady state activity.

If you are sprinting for conditioning and to cut weight you don’t have to be overly concerned with work to rest ratio and total volume as you would if you were training for speed. Simply run hard for 40-100 yards and rest as long as you need to. The whole workout doesn’t need to last more than twenty minutes.

Sometimes after a workout I will drive ten minutes over to the high school and sprint on the field turf immediately after training. I’ll do reduced warm up, since I have already just trained and then run about eight or ten 50-100 yard sprints.

I can’t recommend sprinting highly enough. I honestly believe that EVERYONE should be doing some sort of sprinting twice per week.

It’s what the body was designed to do and nothing will get you in better shape faster.

Please leave your comments below.

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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 be doing the same type of workout I would give the typical skinny hardgainer- low reps, a lower average number of sets and adequate rest periods. Then, when they get stronger you can put them back on the fat loss circuit style routine and they will actually get something out of it.

Many young trainers ask me why their 45 year old house wife clients are hardly sweating and are breathing normally during one of their bootcamp workouts that would kill mnost people, and they are bewildered about what to do with them. Well, that’s the reason, my friends. They’re too weak.

Like I’ve always said, getting strong is the most important thing.

Now, whether or not a 50 year old woman would want to do the same low volume “powerbuilding” type workout that I do is beyond me. But it’s pretty safe to assume she wouldn’t.

When this woman hires you to lose fat she’s expecting to get tortured and to be covered in vomit, sweat and blood by the end of the workout. That’s how most people think you lose fat. It’s not. You can lose fat by doing singles, running sprints and eating right. But most people don’t want to hear that. They need to do what they think they are supposed to do and they need to be entertained. So if you tell her she’s gonna train like Yates for the next 12 weeks it probably won’t go over too well and she’ll probably look for someone else to hire. It’s what she needs, but it’s not what she wants.

How do you work around this problem?

Simple- start each session with 10-20 minutes of strength work. Maybe just pick one exercise per day, and make it a big compound movement. Work up to a few heavy sets of squats and then move on to the circuit stuff for the next 20-30 minutes. You could even pick two heavy exercises like squats and military presses. However you do it, just be sure to get that strength work in. Follow it up with the killer conditioning style circuit and you get the best of both worlds.

Please Leave Your Comments Below

PS. Want a killer, complete fat loss system? Check out John Alvino’s Ripped by clicking HERE.

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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 is to take a 24 hour break from eating once or twice per week. That’s it, simple and effective.

This type of eating program might work for you, or it might not. You just have to try it first. As long as you can find a diet you can stick with for the long term you’ll be able to lose weight, the next key it making sure all of that weight comes from fat. This is where resistance training comes in.

You have to do some form of resistance training in order to maintain and build muscle mass while you’re losing fat. If you are following an effective diet without doing resistance training you could end up losing muscle mass along the way. If this happens you could lose body weight without actually improving the look or shape of your body.

Your actual bodyweight doesn’t matter as much as your percentage of fat. If you can lose 5 pounds of fat, but gain 3 pounds of muscle you will only lose 2 pounds of bodyweight on the scale, but you’ll look 8 pounds different. Even though 2 pounds doesn’t sound like much, the difference on your body fat percentage is the key.

This is why weight training is so important while dieting. Weight training is the best way to make sure you don’t lose muscle while you diet, this helps with overall health as well as improving the overall look and shape of your body. After all when you diet the goal is to show off the lean muscle that is under the fat.

The third key to building muscle while losing fat is protein. You have to eat just enough protein to make sure your muscles can grow. This is a controversial topic that many nutrition ‘experts’ still don’t agree on. But the bottom line is protein is your friend when it comes to building muscle and especially when you’re dieting.

Mix these three key ingredients together and you’ll have a potent fat loss and muscle building program that can transform your body in no time.

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Brad Pilon is a nutrition professional with over eight years experience working in the nutritional supplement industry specializing in clinical research management and new product development. Brad has completed graduate studies in nutritional sciences specializing in the use of short term fasting for weight loss.

His trademarked book Eat Stop Eat has been featured on national television and helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat without sacrificing the foods they love. For more information on Eat Stop Eat, click HERE.

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