This is how you get ABS! Right?? And doesn’t he look happy…

I think maybe there are some odd characters at everyone’s gym, but mine in particular, located in the heart of downtown Toronto, is especially prone to letting weirdos join, many of whom are drawn to engaging me in conversation, much to the benefit of this blog (which I feel like, thanks to guys “Dude”, pretty much writes itself these days).

Me: (Doing chin ups)

Dude: (Approaches me, as if to ask to work in with me. Smiles creepily until I acknowledge his presence)

Me: Uhh hey, you need to work in?

Dude: No, I was just admiring what you were doing.

Me: Oh. Thanks… So what are you working on?

Dude: Uhh, my abs.

Me: (inward face-palm) Ok. Cool. What’s your rationale behind that?

Dude: My what?

Me: Why are you working on your abs?

Dude: Uh, I dunno. I have a lot of energy to burn I guess.

Me: Oh ok, well at least you know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Enjoy the rest of your workout.

Dude looks semi-confused. He smiles, then proceeds to the chest press machine while I finish my set of chin ups. He does a set, sits there for a while, watching me creepily as I perform an intense set of eccentric chins to near failure. He then approaches me again.

Dude: Hey wanna go work on abs with me? (motions to the designated “ab” area of our gym, where one will find the most useless machines ever invented)

Me: No thanks, that’s not really my style. But knock yourself out.

Dude: Oh, ok… See ya later.

I feel only a little bad about this conversation. I don’t think he picked up on my sarcasm, and that’s mostly why I feel bad. The rest of that feeling is attributed to the pity I feel for this poor soul who has not yet seen the light. I’m sure he’ll be “working on his abs” until one day his spine is crushed by the weighted abdominal crunch machine. 

But I suppose I shouldn’t be so rough on the guy. At least he’s using his “extra energy”  on something he values to be positive on his health. I just wish he’d use it on something more productive, like improving his squat strength. I wish dude and his abs the best on their quest for happiness.

… To the dude at the gym yesterday who sat on the chest-press machine for an hour, talking on his iphone, doing set after pathetic set, crap form and all, while watching me complete my entire training session in the same amount of time… YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG! 

Don’t make me list the ways. And oh, I could write a list; but the fact that I neither saw him enter or leave the gym, or do more than one exercise, appalls me. Not to mention his um-impressive physique…

But for now, I’ll just say as tactfully as possible, I hope, for his sake, that his phone conversation was mind blowing, for if not, then he just half-assed his social life AND gym time, simultaneously.

Maybe I would have let it slide if he looked like this… 

No caption required for this picture. Squats and dead-lifts make you a winner- in the gym, and at life in general. Do not neglect these two most powerful life-changing forces.

Because I’m feeling poetic, I will try to keep this post as abbreviated as your time spent in the gym should be. If you are consistently spending more than an hour in the gym, more than 5 days a week, doing 30 set workouts, using 10+ exercises per session (especially if they’re all for your biceps) and are NOT training for a specific sport or competition/are an elite athlete, then YOU ARE DOING TOO MUCH. Especially if you look exactly the same as you did since you started training. Hard work is good and all, but if it is not focused, efficient, and you have still have an unimpressive physique to show for it, your blood, sweat and calluses mean nothing.

Short, simple, straight-forward routines are the winner. But don’t be confused: simple doesn’t mean easy. You still must work extremely hard, but by narrowing your focus to a select group of exercises, and doing these same exercises for the full course of a cycle, trying to slightly increase the weight you are lifting each time you repeat an exercise, resisting the urge to change things up too soon or do stupid shit because it’s fun and easy for you, you will see much faster results and progress consistently and linearly over time.

These main exercises* should consist of the primary part of your training routine:

• Bench press
• Overhead press
• Squat
• Dead-lift (conventional, stiff-legged, and Romanian)
• Chin-ups/pull ups
• Row variations 
• Dips 
   *These are multi-joint exercises that use a large amount of musculature and require the use of your core to stabilize you (so no, you don’t need to do thousands of crunches)

Other, non-core, exercises you should probably include, if you’re smart:

• Shoulder external-rotator work
• Lower/middle trapezius work
• Rear Delt Flys
• Glute-activating functional exercises
• Lat pull-downs
• Plank variations

Of course, depending on your body’s particular structure and functional intricacies and imbalances, you should have someone competent in exercise prescription recommend some specific exercises for you to do. 

If you take one thing out of this post, it should be that you are wasting valuable time in the gym if you are doing bench press, incline bench press, push ups, pec flyes, and 5 kinds of bicep curls as your primary exercises, yet you can barely squat your own body weight on the bar (especially if you are a man who’s been training for more than a year or two). 

Here are some examples of a typical training day in MY life:

Day 1:                                                      Day 2:

Squat                                                       Chin ups              
Rear-delt fly                                            Overhead Press
Seated Cable Row                                   Bent-over barbell row             
Lat Pull-down                                         Dead-lift
Cable shoulder external rotations         Dumbbell shoulder external rotation

As you can see, I don’t usually do more than 5 exercises per training day. Each day has one or two MAIN components, and several supplementary exercises. My major weaknesses I try to address include my rhomboids, shoulder external rotators, lower and mid traps and extremely tight pectorals (from years of ignorance and poor posture). My training program works to correct these issues while gaining strength appropriately. Yours should too. I usually am in and out of the gym within one hour, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. You should be too. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to create the perfect split routine- there’s no such thing. Everything works, but nothing works forever. As soon as you stop seeing progress, change something, whether that be taking a de-load week, changing up your exercises, trying a new rep/set scheme, upping the intensity, you name it. Just stick with the basic, main, multi-joint exercises and you can’t do too much wrong. 

 

Different doses of supplemental vitamin D maintain interleukin-5 without altering skeletal muscle strength: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in vitamin D sufficient adults.

Follow the above link to find the abstract of a study showing the benefits of vitamin D in aiding the immune system! I’m feeling a little stuffy today, so I thought I’d post this for you guys, and also take a shit load of vitamin D in the hopes it will prevent me from getting any sicker.

It is optimal to take WAY more than the daily recommended dose (we’re talking like, 5000 to 10 000 IUs per day). There are no overdose side effects and it is a dirt cheap supplement that IS ACTUALLY USEFUL. I’ve also read that vitamin D makes you happy! Perhaps I’ll have to follow up on this post with some other links to studies showing some real benefits from select helpful supplements.

The Conclusion of This Study?

After supplementation of either 200 or 4000 IUs daily of vitamin D during the winter season in two groups of young adults, the group who had the higher dosage experienced some elevated  blood serum levels related to muscular strength and immune system function. Though I won’t pretend to understand all of the technical jargon, the main thing you should take out of this study is that the findings “could have a broad physiological importance regarding the ability of vitamin D sufficiency to mediate the immune systems protection against infections”.

So no risks, low price, and all benefits are founded in science-based research… sounds like a no-brainer. Take your vitamin D daily people! Just make sure you are taking a good quality supplement.

Brand I recommend- Truestar’s TrueD (click link for full product info and to purchase at a discounted price). Absolutely the best. 


Stay healthy folks! 

LOOKS PRETTY GOOD, DOESN’T IT?

I saw this on my friend’s facebook page the other day, and had to call him out on his bullshit. Not to say that organic food isn’t great- If I could afford to, I would buy everything organic, but not for the reasons outlined in the above chart.

The chart (which by the way, was published in a gardening catalogue, and not a reputable scientific journal), states that organic produce is “more nutritious” than conventionally grown crops. I hate to break it to you, but this is a big fat myth. 

There is a difference between being “heathier” and “more nutritious”. The term “healthier” is vague, and could be alluding a variety of different factors. I would agree with most in saying that organic foods are, in general, the healthier choice. The main reasons for this being that they are not sprayed with pesticides, no hormones are injected into them, numerous ethical reasons, and not to mention that organic produce and meat tastes delicious. I think I nearly creamed the first time I ate organic, grass-fed beef. 

When it comes to beef, you can clearly see the difference in amount of fat and  just how much less appetizing the non-organic, corn-fed, variety looks. If you can get your hands on some good quality organic beef, do it! I get mine from my good friend’s farm, Stoeckli Organics.

There is, however, no concrete evidence that organic foods have a higher level of nutrients than the conventional variety. So if this is the reason you buy organic produce, you’ve been paying more than you need to for a reason that is not yet founded in science-based research. Yes, you are still benefiting from the fact that you won’t be consuming chemicals and excess hormones, but if nutrition is your prime concern, conventional produce will do just fine.

Ask yourself if the price and luxury of organic foods is worth it, when you can get the same nutritional value elsewhere. It is easy to get sucked in the trap of thinking you need to buy organic. It can become obsessive. If I had the money, I probably would only buy organic foods. For the people that do have that kind of financial viability, knock yourselves out! The point I am making is, if you DON’T have the funds to buy organic foods, and the supposed necessity to consume them has been instilled in you by some health obsessed, orthorexic do good-er, you don’t need to worry! You can still eat a healthy diet, build muscle, lose fat, and not break the bank. I treat myself to organic foods once in a while, because that’s all I can afford. 

The following are excerpts from a paper I originally wrote a couple years back, and they underscore the mythology behind the mainstream belief that organic food is more nutritious than their conventional counterparts (and my sources are from reputable scientific journals, not a gardening catalogue). Enjoy.

“There is no  way to be sure a particular food on the supermarket shelf has been produced organically, regardless of what the label says, because there are so many different criteria, and most are hard to verify scientifically.” Some allegedly organic meat farmers are permitted to use antibiotics on their livestock once a year, and this would technically disqualify them from the organic label (Ravillious, 2006).

… Agriculture is very inconsistent. “Valid comparison studies between organic and conventionally produced foods require that the plants are cultivated in similar soils, under similar climatic conditions, are sampled at the same time and are analysed using the same validated methods” (Williamson, 2007). Furthermore, genetic variation in plants and animals contribute to differences in product quality and nutritional content, whether it is organic or not (Magkos, 2003).  In fact all foods show a natural variation in nutrient levels which depend on factors such as climate, ripeness, crop variety, freshness and storage conditions (Williamson, 2007). 

Although conventional crops do use pesticides, there is no reason to avoid these foods for that reason. According to a study done by the Pesticide Residues Committee, pesticide residues were found to be absent in about 70% of the tested produce. In the remaining 30%, residues were below the maximum residue levels and therefore pose no health concerns for consumers (Williamson, 2007).

While comparing organic and conventionally produced grains, potatoes and vegetables, there were no major differences in mineral, trace element or B vitamin levels. In vegetables there were no differences found in levels of vitamin A or beta-carotene. (Williamson, 2007). There was however a trend towards higher levels of vitamin C and several other micronutrients in some organic produce in a range of anywhere from 9-42%, however much more research is required to confirm these findings.

Studies on fruits, once again, do not reveal any significant differences in nutrient content between conventional and organic produce. Vitamins B1, B2 and ascorbic acid levels remained similar.  Concentrations of trace minerals and elements such as magnesium, iron and copper were also not found to be significantly different (Magkos, 2003).

In dairy products such as milk and cheese, there were found to be significantly higher levels of alpha-linolenic acid, conjugated-linolenic acid, vitamin E, and beta-carotene in organically fed cows (Williamson, 2007).  It is yet to be determined however, whether these levels are higher because of the changes in diet, or because of the lower milk yield in organic cattle (Williamson, 2007).  There were no significant differences in many other nutrients found in milk, such as calcium, zinc, vitamin B2 or vitamin B12, therefore drinking organic milk is unlikely to make much of a difference in terms of micronutrient intake (Williamson, 2007).  In addition, these findings must be dealt with cautiously when one takes into consideration the natural genetic variation between animals of the same species in product quality (Magkos, 2003). No two cows have the same milk.

 In some organically produced vegetables and legumes, it was found that there was a lower protein content, but higher protein quality, which means a higher proportion of amino acids. (Willaimson, 2007). To determine whether this is healthier than conventional produce also requires further research. Furthermore, because vegetables and potatoes are not a significant source of protein in the average diet, any differences in protein content would only be of importance in the case of extreme vegetarian or vegan diets. (Magkos, 2003) 

Sources: 

Essoussi, L.H., & Zahaf, M (2008). Decision making process of community organic food consumers: An exploratory study. Journal of Consumer Marketing. 25, 95-104.

John Paull. (2006). The Farm as Organism: The Foundational Idea of  Organic Agriculture. Elementals: Journal of Bio-Dynamics Tasmania. 80, 14-18.

Magkos, Faidon, Arvaniti, Fotini, & Zampelas, Antonis (2003). Organic Food: Nutritious Food or Food For Thought? A Review Of The Evidence. International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition. 54, 357-371.

Ravilious, K. (2006). Buyer beware: When you shell out for a premium food how do you know you’re getting what you pay for? Kate Ravilious investigates the rise of food fraud. New Scientist.192, 40-44.

Williamson, C.S. (2007).Is Organic Food Better For Our Health?                     Nutrition Bulletin. 32, 104-108. 

 

Let’s start this post off right- Check out this hot chick doing a snatch. 

NOW- Assuming you actually HAVE a fitness goal…

 If you don’t have a specific, quantifiable, measurable and reasonable goal, then you’re wasting valuable time. You say, “Oh I just want to look BETTER”, “I just want ABS”, or as one of my clients told me, “I just wanna get TONED”. Horse-shit. Those are all vague terms that don’t have a measurable, reachable, end-point. What does better mean to you? You already have abs, but what about that layer of fat they’re hidden under? Do you even know what the physiological term for tone means?

Ok, so now that you’re ready to set some actual goals, you need to use the proper language to describe them, and that language is numeric. You need to say, “My waist will be ‘x’ inches by ‘specific date’”. Or something along those lines. If you just tell yourself, “I’ll do it ASAP”, that again, is a vague term that does not promote an adequate sense of urgency. 

Now if you have your measurable goals written down (and you should definitely write them down), you need to find what motivates you to take action. For me, it was the fact that I needed to be on stage practically naked within a 6 week time frame, and my (highly judgemental) parents were going to see me perform in this particular show. It scared the shit out of me. 

The most effective motivation induction technique is to plan to put yourself in a future situation where if you are not at your fitness goal, you will feel like you want to die of embarrassment. 

That’s what worked for me anyway. This might mean stepping way outside your comfort zone. I had no choice, so I got it done. Give yourself no choice but to succeed.

Moving along. I’ve ranted enough for one post, so without further adieu, here are some useful resources, full of No BS approved information, inspiration, and tools to achieve your goals and track your progress (don’t make me smack you for not keeping track of your progress…)

Fitocracy- It’s like a social network/game for people who wanna get jacked! Warning: Highly addictive. I had to stop using it or it would have taken over my life.

Truestar- Get profiled for free by a panel of experts for customized meal plans, exercise plans, sleep tips, attitude tips and tons of free information (p.s. I can get you a discount on their professional supplement line).

Fitness Black Book- One of my favourite fitness blogs out there, by Rusty Moore. SO much information, and highly entertaining. 

Exercise Routines Blog- Want to switch up your routine or get inspiration for new exercises? This is an awesome source for new training info.

 Leangains- Definitely No BS approved content on this site, if you can get through the technical jargon. If you’re interested in learning more about intermittent fasting and abbreviated training routines, this is the place to look.

Protein Power- Tired of post-work out protein shakes? Find fun, high protein recipes, using protein powder, here!

Adonis Index- Training system for ideal proportions for men.

Venus Index- Training system for ideal proportions for women.

Ok, thats enough for now. Happy training!

Hey peeps. Check out my contest page for your chance to compete in one of two (or both!) challenges I’ve posted about. This is your chance to win prizes by accomplishing your fitness goals. Talk about positive reinforcement! All the deets are on the contest page, so check ‘er out. 

Stay tuned for more posts on fun topics such as:

-The Shortcomings of Primarily Cardio-Based Exercise Programs 

-Dietary Supplementation: Don’t be Retarded 

-How a Personal Trainer Can Benefit You

-The Fastest Way to do Chin-ups

-The Main Exercises Your Training Routines Must Include for Optimal Results

AND MORE! 

Drop me a line if you have any burning issues (er…) you would like me to address in upcoming posts.