Training to get lean

I had a pretty full morning today at I-FAST - Monday mornings are quickly becoming one of our busiest times.

After getting through everyone's workouts, I found myself very hungry and decided to head to one of my favorite breakfast joints, Cafe Patchou. They use free-range eggs, have all kinds of exotic fruits, and their yogurt/granola is simply out-of-this-world. But this post isn't about my gluttony and love for breakfast.

As I was driving, I saw several overweight people walking along a path here on the northside of Indy. Now I'm not a slave to any dogma, and I know that walking can be beneficial to your health and well-being. But, since they were overweight I can only assume they were doing this to lose weight - and it's simply not the most efficient way to do things.

One of the first questions I'm asked when people tour our gym is "Where are your treadmills?" I always explain to them that the way we structure their strength and energy system workouts makes the need for treadmills irrelevant. Not that they can't be useful - but for $3,000 (the minimum you're going to pay for a decent commerical-grade treadmill), I could buy several Prowlers, Airdyne's, and a whole set of kettlebells!

In fact, all of our clients did energy system training this morning, considering body comp is a priority to all of them. Instead of slaving away on the treadmill they pushed the prowler, performed KB swings, or did interval sprints on the Airdyne. I've found thus far that our clients really enjoy this kind of EST much more than "traditional" means - it's quick, efficient and brutally effective.

I'm not saying that intervals are the only way to get someone lean, but they certainly can help if integrated appropriately into a program. If you yourself are looking to get lean, be sure to check out Leigh Peele's Fat Loss Troubleshoot or Alwyn Cosgrove's and Mike Roussell's Warp Speed Fat Loss programs.

Stay strong
MR

Anyone need an Indianapolis Personal Trainer?

Well, the I-FAST site is really coming around! Mike Roussell has been hard at work over the past couple of weeks to bring it together, so be sure to check it out below. If you're interested in personal training, sports performance training, or simply an open gym membership, you owe it to yourself to check us out.

Stay strong
MR


Indianapolis Personal Trainer

Random thoughts #3

While prepping for the upcoming Indy Seminar, it's been hard stringing together coherent thoughts. For that reason alone, let's continue on with some random thoughts I've been having:

- Developing a presentation, or series of presentations, really dials in your thought processes. I'm constantly striving to fill in the gaps and make the presentations more thorough. Hopefully that will be the case.

- I got a chance to check out the seminar facility yesterday as well, and it's pretty damn nice. Right in the heart of downtown Indy, it should be a great location for this and years to come.

- Heavy, deep front squats are just about the only thing that irritate my knee. My meniscal tear was in the antero-lateral region, so it isn't until the femur rolls and glides quite a bit until it hits that exposed area. After talking with Bill, he also mentioned that shear forces are greater laterally than medially, so these will be excluded from the programming for the time being.

- I think the interview with Eric Cressey yesterday was one of, if not the best, I've had on the site so far. In case you missed it, you can check it out HERE. As well, don't forget to sign-up for future newsletters so you can receive them directly in your inbox.

- Finally, Mike Roussell's and Alwyn Cosgrove's new Warp Speed Fat Loss went live today as well. Like I said in the newsletter, even if you don't purchase the product there's tons of free info to digest on the site as well. I'm always up for learning more, so be sure to check it out.

I think that's it for me right now. I'm definitely in seminar mode right now, so if I'm a little sporadic with the blog posts please forgive me!

All the best
MR

The Training Lifestyle

I hate the term diet.

I know, I know - "hate" is a strong word. But I seriously hate the word diet.

Why? Because it insinuates that eating healthy is something you're only going to do for a specific period of time. In other words, you'll stay on said "diet" until you lose X amount of pounds, Y amount of body fat, or generally feel the way you want to about yourself.

And after that? You fall right back into your lousy nutritional habits, effectively ending up right back where you started!

One of my pet peeves in this industry are people who condone this. It's one thing if you're a competitive bodybuilder, fitness or figure competitor - you really are dieting to get down to a ridiculously low body fat, to compete on a given day. The general population, or people who just want to be healthy, don't need to "diet." In fact, they'd be better off if they banished the word diet from their vocabulary all together!

If you want to stay healthy and be in shape for many years to come, you need to develop a nutritionally sound lifestyle; this will allow you to be successful over the long haul. If you go over to T-Nation.com, they are literally hundreds of articles on how to eat properly. If you want something a little bit more complete, check out John Berardi's Precision Nutrition or Mike Roussell's Naked Nutrition Guide - either will get you on the way to long-term success.

Regardless of what path you choose, understand that a "diet" is a short-term band aid. Instead, choose a path that will give you the greatest possibilty of long-term success.

Stay strong
MR

Talking Shop: Mike Roussell

Supplements won’t make or break your success. This is a key point. But many people will interpret this as supplements don’t work. That’s not the case; certain supplements do work and can boost your progress. At the simplest level if you are taking a fat loss supplement then you need to be in caloric deficient for it to work. The same goes for a supplement that is going to help boost muscle growth; you need to be in a caloric excess. This sounds basic but it is often overlooked by people.

Here’s another idea that I’ve been thinking about lately. Before you take a supplement you owe it to your body to understand the general mechanism in which that supplement will elicit the desired response. If you are taking a fat burner then you should take the time to educate yourself to the ingredients and how they work. Once you do that you will be able to better compare products, cater your supplementation to your own body, and make some killer stacks.

I was just talking with Bill Hartman about this the other day. Take Biotest’s Hot-Rox Extreme for example. HRX rocks my world (pun intended). It makes me so wired. I am very sensitive to the combination of caffeine and yohimbe. If I take it past 2pm then I have trouble sleeping. But one of the ingredients that I really like in HRX is Biotest’s forskolin derivative, Carbolin-19. So what I’m going to do now is just take the HRX in the morning and then take a full dose of Carbolin-19 in the afternoon. Carbolin-19 isn’t a stimulant so I won’t have any trouble taking it in the afternoon. By using it I will still be able to upregulate cAMP – if the supplement does what it is supposed to and from looking at the literature I think it does. cAMP is important for facilitating fat loss.

Mike Roussell

Can you out-train a bad diet?

A few weeks ago I was reading the "Fat Loss Hierarchy" article written by Alwyn Cosgrove at t-nation.com, and he brings up a great point:

Can you out-train a bad diet? Especially if your primary goal is fat loss?

In fact, Cosgrove goes on to state that proper diet/nutrition is not only THE most important factor in fat loss, it should be the top two most important factors. It's THAT important.

Which brings me to where I am today...

Our company in Indianapolis, Custom Fitness/Custom Athletics, is running a bodyfat challenge for the month of June. The client who loses the greatest amount of body fat over 5 weeks is deemed the winner, and receives a very nice little prize. As part of the challenge, all the coaches are participating as well. My training has been going great, and I've been steadily losing body fat in the process.

But not like I feel like I should.

I've been training hard; cutting rest periods, using big, basic exercises, and I've even doing interval sessions (which totally suck, I might add). So why am I not garnering the body fat loss I think I should?

Diet.

Quite simply, I haven't had my diet as dialed in as I need to. Had I done better up to this point with cutting starchy carbs to pre-determined times, or doing better with regards to nutrient timing, I could be a lot farther along at this point. And it rings true that the leaner you get, the more dialed in your diet must become - not the opposite! How many times have you seen someone start to get lean, and then they go back to their old ways thinking they've "made it" or something?

Here's the moral of the story - no matter what your goals are, you must emphasize proper diet and nutrition to maximize recovery and/or body fat loss. If you have no clue how to eat properly, when to eat certain foods, or just need a nutrition overhaul, check out John Berardi's Precision Nutrition or Mike Roussell's Naked Nutrition Guide.

I should have an article going up at T-nation later this week with regards to my current training, and when the contest is over I'll be sure to let everyone know how much body fat I lost.

I just hope the calories I take in while vacationing in Vegas this weekened won't count.... ;)

Stay strong
MR