Your Muscle Building and Fat Loss Questions Answered

Fat Loss, How to Build Muscle

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.

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