21. Male. Personal Trainer. Fitness enthusiast. Weight lifter. Achieving my goals by strengthening and maintaining my three greatest assets: Head, Heart, and Legs
amazhonligia asked: I have posted a pic of myself, check it out on my page and tell me what i need to work on to get a toned body
Hi there,
so first you need to realize what getting a “toned” body means: Toneing is basically a girl term for building muscle and getting a defined body.
Therefore, there are two ways that you need to approach getting toned
1) strength training
2) fat burning.
There are a multitude of ways you can do this, but in your case, since you have access to weights I would recommend you spend 2-3 days a week doing high intensity circuit training, in which you set out a list of 8-10 exercises in a circuit and repeat the circuit 3-5 times without rest (or rest when needed but minimally). On days when your not weight training you should do some medium intensity cardio for 30-60 minutes, you should do this 2-3 times a week.
For your circuit training, you need to split the excercises so that your able to continue without rest. A good strategy for this is switching between a lower and upper body exercise, or ensuring that you’re working very different muscle groups in every excercise.
Beyond that you need to pay attention to your eating habits. Smaller, more frequent meals will help keep your metabolism going, you want to be smart about your nutrition choices and ensure you’re running some kind of calorie deficit (never more than a 500 calorie deficit) to promote fat burning. Which also means you need to find out what your base calorie burn is, you can do this by finding a calorie burning calculator on Google. You don’t have to be so scientific about it if you don’t want to, but it helps when you know exactly what your limits are.
That’s about all the advice I can give you for now, If you need help with a specific gym program, or have questions about different exercises you could do, just let me know. Hope this helps!
misterhawannagofast asked: what group do you ride with on the weekends usually?
I ride with the DC Bike Rack shop ride on Sunday mornings.
justkeepgoing84 asked: Hope it's not too late for questions! OK, so I'm wondering how often you need to switch up your workout for effective muscle confusion? I currently do 4 weight training circuits/week (2 upper body, 2 lower body) and cardio 5-6 days. Can I stick to weights and just do different exercises for the same muscle groups, or do I need to do something completely different? Thanks:o)
Hi there!
Great question, it takes about 4-6 weeks for your body to cycle through the shock/adaptation phase for a particular workout. so switching up your routine every 6-8 weeks is a good idea, you don’t want to wait much longer than that.
You don’t necessarily have to do something completely different, switching your number of reps and sets can be sufficient, until such a time that you get bored, or feel that you need to switch up your routine to target certain weak spots. Until then, you can always switch between say, 12-15 rep sets x 3-5 (muscle endurance), 8-10 rep sets x 3-4 (balanced), and 3-5 rep sets x 3 (strength & power). Obviously you adjust the weights your lifting accordingly for it to be challenging depending on the number of reps your doing (high reps, low weight/low reps high weight).
Hope this helps!
motivationforfitness asked: I'm going to harass you about foam rolling again: I know you can foam roll every day, but should the parts rolled be rotated? I'm especially considering the very knotted areas (like my calves and quads.) Should I let them rest for a certain number of days or roll them daily until they stop sucking at life? (My quads are so bad the knot tries to "pop" to the side when I work it.)
Hi there Bonnie!
Good question actually,
I’m going to answer this based on what I know, as I don’t have any way to fact check myself at the moment.
I would say you’re pretty safe foam rolling every day, foam rolling is very similar to stretching, in fact, static stretching has the potential to create more muscle damage than foam rolling does, and we’re still supposed to stretch every day.
I would say that if your feeling good and the foam rolling is making you feel limber and relaxed, then go ahead and roll it out everyday. If you feel as though it’s making your sore, or the knots you rolled out the previous day are feeling particularly tender, then don’t feel guilty about skipping that part of your body that day or doing an every other day kind of thing.
Ultimately you’ve just got to listen to what your body is telling you, but as far as I know your not going to injure yourself by foam rolling the same body parts everyday (in fact I know a few trainers at my gym that roll twice a day and they say they don’t even feel it anymore, even on the black high density rollers).
amazhonligia asked: I have stopped working out, becuz of work. I want to tone up again.But i need help on a routine.
Hi there,
glad to hear your thinking about working out again. How many times a week do you want to work out? What kind of a equipment do you have access to (dumbbells, barbells, fully equipped gym?). What’s your current fitness level like?
Let me know and maybe I can provide some basic suggestions.
I’m going to pass on the best piece advice to you that I got from Chris McCormack’s (two time Kona Ironman champ) book: drink when you’re thirsty. Your body is an incredible machine, and when your sodium/plasma levels are just a little bit off, you begin to feel thirsty, obey your body and drink.
It’s a good idea to carry a water bottle around with you and drink as you go about your daily activities. It’s incredible how much more you drink if you have quick access to water. You may not think you’re thirsty, but if you have a bottle sitting on your desk/in your bag you could be surprised by how often you feel the urge to take a sip.
During exercise, hydration prior and post exercise is of chief importance, drink several glasses of water leading up to exercise and drink 16-24 ounces of water for every pound of body weight you lose after exercise. If your doing longer workouts, especially in hot, humid weather, again, obey your thirst, drink to satisfaction but don’t overdo it.
Hydration culture over the past 20 years, promoted by the likes of gatorade has conditioned us to believe we need to pound as much water as our stomachs can hold. This leads to plasma dilution and in severe cases, hyponatremia (water intoxication). An increase in individuals running Marathons has been observed as a result of this over-hyrdrating culture.
The best piece of advice I can give you is when in doubt: obey your thirst. But remember: water is not the only thing you’re losing when you sweat, a balanced diet and frequent meals will ensure you’re replenishing the nutrients you lose in sweat.
dkcf asked: hey man. glad you're back on the west coast. i just made my move to LA from the SF Bay Area. I was doing CrossFit up there but it's just too damn expensive. So gonna join a regular gym I think. I'm trying to figure out a workout routine/figuring out what to do. I used to hate going to gyms cause I would just mill around for a while trying to figure out what to do next and not have a game plan. any suggestions? my goal is to lose weight and do total body stuff. Anything close to Cfit would do.
Hey man,
Glad to hear your settling in.
My first suggestion to you would be to focus on these core lifts: Squat, Deadlift, Bench Press, Military Press, Wide (or close grip) grip cable pull down.
Any other lifting you do should focus on strengthening these core lifts, but those are the lifts that will get you the fastest and best results in terms of size and strength gain.
If your looking for a crossfit style workout all you have to do is structure your workouts in a way that means you won’t have to ever rest. So you can switch between an upper body move and a lower body move, or do push move then a pull move. If your not up for designing your own plan, take a look at the routines provided on the Mens Fitness website, or check out the profiles on SimplyShredded.com and adapt some of the routines that those guys use.
Good luck!
thatgrl182 asked: Hey, just started following you, and I love your blog! I have a question though, hopefully you can help me out x] I'm a cyclist, and I just started crossfit a few weeks ago. In your opinion, if I do both crossfit and cycling in the same day, how long should I wait between both workouts? Or do you even recommend I do both in one day? Since they're both pretty intense x] thank you in advance!
Hi there,
this has been a question I’ve been struggling with myself actually by trying to space out my triathlon workouts from my gym workouts.
First let me start of by saying that since it is the off season, if you’re going to do two a days, now is the time to do it, because if you do end up overdoing it during one particular week by accident, you can always take time to rest and recover.
In terms of the very idea of mixing crossfit and cycling, it’s going to be a very thin line between strengthening yourself and overtraining. Also, the benefit your cycling will see from it will most likely be minimal, the best way to improve your cycling is to…cycle more, however I understand the desire to be in great full body shape as well as improving your sport. The problem with crossfit is that it’s designed to create as much muscle damage as possible by mixing power lifts with endurance while maintaining an extremely high intensity, while denying rest. This leads to incredibly high levels of muscle damage to the point where it can became damaging to the bodies organs. However, it takes a very motivated athlete to achieve this kind of muscle damage and most people will slow down or have to stop to rest before achieving this kind of muscle damage.
Now keeping in mind that your crossfit workouts are going to be intense, you need to be thinking about how often you should be doing crossfit workouts: two, three, four, five times a week?
After that you need to do the same for cycling and also factor in how intense, and for how long of durations you’re cycling. Also, whether you are doing your cycling before, your crossfit workouts or after (my recommendation would be before, otherwise you’re muscles will be too fatigued from the earlier workout).
When it comes to exercise, it’s all about intensity, try not to mix days where you have a very intense crossfit workout with a very intense cycling workout. Or, if that is the case, make sure both your workouts for the following day or two are done at a recovery intensity.
If you are going to try to consistantly do two-a-days your recovery is going to be of the utmost importance. If you don’t allow your body time to repair the muscle damage you’ve done to it, and you don’t keep yourself properly fueled. You’re going to crash. So:
Make sure you are getting plenty of sleep, every night, at least 8-10 hours worth, if you can, drop in a 30-60 minute nap during the day.
Pay very close attention to your nutrition, you need to make sure you’re getting plenty of protein to help with that muscle repair and plenty of carbs, a mix of simple and complex, to keep you fueled during your workouts. A multivitamin isn’t a bad idea either, to ensure you’re body isn’t running low on any critical nutrients. This should go without saying, but beyond the above, maintain a healthy a balanced diet.
Stretch: With all the tearing and repairing, tensing and relaxing, your muscles are going to be in need of consistent stretching. It will reduce your chance of injury, it will help your muscle fibers align properly when healing, and it actually makes you stronger (in the long run, the short run is a different story, never do static stretching before workouts).
*phew*
ok…so that’s about all that I can spit at you for now, I hope I haven’t just made you more confused with my blabbering. Let me know if you have any other questions
dkcf asked: i sometimes wake up early to go workout due to my schedule and literally just wake up, brush my teeth, and head out. I've noticed that I feel weaker and just don't have the endurance/stamina like I do if I work out in the afternoon. any suggestions on something quick i can run out the door with that I can do a really good workout in without throwing it up? (it's literally 30-45 minutes between me waking up and being in the gym)
Hi there,
let me start out by saying that you are not alone in feeling sluggish in the morning. You may feel like it’s because you just woke up, however it’s actually a documented phenomenon that exertion levels are perceived to be higher early on in the day rather than later.
I’ll see if I can find the study, but Runner’s World references it in there book on running mechanics. The gist of it is, your perceived exertion is much higher at the same heart rate than it would be later on during the day. I can’t exactly explain to you why, but again, I’ll see if I can pull up the study.
In terms of how to get out of that morning funk, I’ll just remind you of this point: caffeine is your friend, it has proven performance benefits. Lots of pre-workout supplements have caffeine, but something as simple as a big cup of coffee should do.
Disclaimer (sorry have to put this whenever I’m making direct recomendations):
b0mbdotcom asked: Hey if I got your last post correct high weight low reps is dealing with mostly the fast twitch muscle group?
That’s correct. High weight explosive lifting if the best way to develop fast-twitch muscle. To a certain extent you are training fast-twitch muscle whenever you are lifting, however the higher the rep range and the slower the lift, the more slow-twitch muscle you are engaging.
hergeekness asked: As a girl lifting weights with the intent of lean muscle, is there ever a point when you reach too much weight? I mean, I know using 10lb dumbbells for bicep curls right now is hardly going to make me beefy, but when those get too light and I move to 12s and then those get too light and I go up to 15s, is there a point where I should stop increasing weight?
Hey there, good question!
There is no such thing as lifting “too much weight” as long as you’re using proper form and you have no existing injuries. As you get stronger and your muscles adapt to the weights you’re already lifting, you’re going to need to increase the weight/adjust the amount of reps or sets you’re doing.
Don’t be worried that you’re lifting too much weight if you’re happy with your progress. It’s not like you’re going to wake up one day and suddenly be big and beefy. If at any point you feel like you don’t want to get any bigger, you simply stop adding weight and focus on maintaining you’re form rather than improving it.
If you’re that worried about getting too beefy, keep this in mind. Higher weight, lower rep sets, such as a weight that you can only complete 3-5 reps with, will promote strength and power, fast twitch muscle which tends to be bulkier. Sets of 12-15 will focus more on muscle endurance, slow twitch, which still increases muscle size somewhat, but not as much as power training does. Depending on your performance goals, you can mix and match your work outs for endurance and performance, based on a day to day, week to week, or month to month basis, a mix of both is probably the best way to go.
In any case, it takes muscle about 4-6 weeks to adapt to your workouts so you should be adjusting accordingly.
thefitmusician asked: Do you have a PT certification, or are you in the process of getting one? If so, what cert?
I’m currently in the process.
I’m going for an ACE certification.
adrianolion asked: since you asked some questions haha, just a tip, if you are sore after maybe 2 days the last workout you did, and you need to train again those muscles or the ones near like back-shoulders ext, is correct to train even if you are sore? or is better dont' know do an other muscle group, ex. legs ?
The soreness you feel after training or DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) is a result of the inflammation caused by the micro-tears you have created in your muscle while working out (that inflammation plays a role in muscle repair but that’s a different story).
If you are still sore from a previous work out then it means your muscle has not had enough time to adequately repair itself. If you choose to work out at this time you will most likely be simply re-tearing the inadequately healed damage in your muscle and creating new tears. The problem with this is that the whole point of creating muscle damage is to let new muscle grow in to repair the damage, which, step by step, leads to stronger, larger muscles.
for bodybuilding, you want to allow time for your muscles to heal completely. For endurance athletes, such as a runner there can be certain benefits to training through soreness which have to do with the fitness/from ratio.
But if you’re referring to simply gym work outs, give your body plenty of time to recover, don’t train a muscle if it is still sore from a prior workout.
misterhawannagofast asked: got another question for ya, any recommendation for a good pair of running shoes that for a college student on a budget?
Hmm good question,
Let me start off by saying I understand your strapped-for-cash-college-student situation, I’m in the same boat.
But, here’s a peace of advice for you: buy the absolute best equipment that you can afford, if you can afford to spend 50 then do it, or better yet, spend 60 and skip a meal, you want to invest in something that’s not going to fall apart in a few weeks and that is going to help you perform at your optimal level
With that being said my favorite running shoes are Brooks, but they’re not cheap. Personally I run in Adrenalins and I have since high school.
Aisics are good too.
don’t buy Nike’s, the soles wear out too quickly.
Honestly, if you can get yourself to a Sport Chalet or an REI (do they have those out here on the east coast?) or a Dick’s Sporting Goods, you’ll be able to find shoes in the 40-60 dollar range, I wouldn’t go any lower than that.
Avoid running specific stores unless you’re prepared to drop the cheddar, as they tend to jack up prices and only carry higher end shoes.
Also, I would recommend going to the Runner’s World website and reading up on their reviews. They tend to stick to higher end shoes, but you might find a gem in there somewhere.
misterhawannagofast asked: curious question, how does bicep strength benefit for a triathlete
I would say the only place it really benefits is for the swim as you’re engaging both the tricep and the bicep throughout the freestyle swim stroke.
But, to be absolutely frank, I don’t work my arms to improve my triathlon performance, its something you could probably work minimally if that’s all you wanted to focus on.
My weight lifting goals aren’t really associated with triathlon, I just do it because I enjoy the aesthetics I get from it, the performance benefits I get that crossover to triathlon are more of a bonus.
