Sep 14

Can I burn fat with resistance training alone?

The topic of how to optimally burn fat and get results efficiently is always a popular one.  One question that I commonly get asked is:

“What mode of exercise is the most efficient way to burn fat and maintain lean muscle mass?”

While basically every mode of physically activity will utilize fat as a fuel source, there is a common misconception that doing high repetitions of simple movements to get your heart rate as high as possible is the best way to shed extra fat on unwanted areas of the body.  While maintaining a high heart rate is critical for burning calories, other forms of exercise such as resistance training with weights, yoga and steady state cardio (like swimming or running) are very effective ways of shedding fat and maintaining lean muscle mass.

It is true that increasing the heart rate through exercise will burn calories.  However, there is a certain point at which an increased heart rate will utilize carbohydrate in the body more that fat.  When the heart rate goes above a certain threshold of about 70% of the participants maximum heart rate, the body will go into utilizing an energy system called the anaerobic energy system to use more sugars as a fuel source.  Maintaining a heart rate below about 60% will utilize more fats in the body as a fuel source.  Research has shown that low and slow modes of exercise can utilize more fat as a fuel source for intra exercise calorie burn.  In contrast, more intense modes of exercise have been revealed to utilize increased amounts of carbohydrate and less fat as a fuel source during workouts.  While it seems that higher intensity cardio session may burn less fat throughout the workout, there is an increased amount of calories from fat being used as a fuel source for human performance AFTER a high intensity cardio session has been completed.

Enter High Intensity Interval Training (or HIIT).  HIIT is a very popular form of exercise that involves exercise being performed at high perceived exertion level for a period of time followed by rest.  These intervals are repeated a certain amount of time throughout the workout to make the heart increased rapidly and then decrease during the rest period.  An example of HIIT might look like this:

  1. Burpees for 40 seconds

-Rest for 20, then immediately start:

  1. Jumping Jacks for 40 seconds

-Rest for 20 seconds, then immediately start:

  1. Step Ups for 40 seconds

-Rest for 20 seconds, then immediately go back to exercise #1

And then repeat this same circuit 4 more times.

Now looking at the exercise mode listed above, let’s compare it to a form of resistance training involving weights that uses sets and repetitions as its variable of exercise completion:

  1. Squats- 3 sets of 10 repetitions (with a 30-45 second rest in between sets)
  2. Push Ups- 3 sets of 10 repetitions (with a 30-45 second rest in between sets)
  3. Dumbbell Row- 3 sets of 10 repetitions (with a 30-45 second rest in between sets)

Looking at the rest period, they appear kind of similar to the HIIT, doesn’t it?  The only difference is that the repetitions are being counted… not timed like they are in the HIIT training.

The reason resistance training is being compared to HIIT training is that the modes of exercise are very similar to where the body will be under tension and exertion during exercise for a certain period of time followed by a specific rest period.  The timing might be slightly different, but the body will still be exerting itself and then resting in both applications of exercise.  This means that both modes of exercise will invoke a high amount of oxygen that will be consumed throughout the participants day following the exercise session.

So resistance training alone CAN elicit losses in body fat and maintain lean muscle mass that are similar to other modes of exercise.  Of course, performing resistance training is not the only way to burn fat.  Every human body and human mind reacts differently to exercise.  Perhaps doing Yoga or Barre classes are more beneficial for certain individuals then resistance training and vice versa.  The key is finding a balance among which mode of exercise will stimulate the mind and body the best to maintain lean muscle mass and burn excess fat at the same time.

Jun 24

Push Ups and Planks are Hard!  Always Room for Improvement!

 

Planks and Push Ups are forms of exercise in which one holds themselves up in a prone position.  The prone position of the body is when the front of the body is facing the ground or laying face down on the ground.  Supporting oneself in this position requires a particular set of coordination and muscles acting in unison.  Strength in the prone position can benefit our performance as humans in many ways throughout our everyday lives.

First, let’s look at why you would need to strengthen your body from this position.  Many movements throughout the day require you to be able to manipulate and stabilize objects that are in front of you.  For example, reaching out to get something, turning your steering wheel on your car, doing the dishes, pushing your BBQ to the other side of the deck…  These activities require performance from the pushing muscles of the upper body.  Some of the main pushing muscles are the pectorals, deltoids and triceps.  Extending the hands out and pushing something or reaching for an object uses the muscles responsible for arm extension and pushing movements.  In the case of this article, one can see that supporting the body from a prone position with the elbows locked out can help strengthen these examples of our pushing muscles’ performance.

Another reason to why it is important to strengthen your body from this prone position is because the posture of the trunk and core must be correct to perform the Plank and/or Push Up exercise safely and effectively.  I like to call the linear relationship between the thighs and upper body the “trunk-to-floor” angle.  By maintaining a straight trunk-to-floor angle while performing a plank; you will be activating the postural muscles surrounding the spine which are critical for good posture when standing or sitting throughout our stressful days.  As humans in this very busy era, we stand a lot and work very long hours in our jobs and activities.  Throughout the day, we can let gravity get the best of us and forget to have good posture.  An example of forgetting about good posture might be sagging forward at the head and chest region or sitting in slouched position with the shoulder blades rolled forward and neck drooping.  By performing a plank exercise in the prone position, we are putting positive stress on the muscles that we use to stabilize ourselves when standing and sitting throughout the day.  This positive stress will strengthen the postural muscles of the abdomen region and the muscles going up and down the spine.  Therefore, exercising the muscles of postural stabilization that we use while in vertical position throughout our day will substantially benefit our performance in our everyday lives when standing or sitting.

In addition to stabilizing oneself in this plank position assisting posture and coordination in pushing movement, planks in the prone position can assist us in an underrated exercise that a lot of people are afraid to admit they need improvement in.  This technique is the PUSH UP.  The Push Up is a very complete upper body pushing movement.  While performing a push up, the triceps, pectorals and anterior deltoids are utilized in unison with the muscles of postural stabilization.  This is common exercise that is avoided because it is challenging for most people.  This challenge is usually seen as a daunting, scary task… so people unfortunately avoid it.  However, there is a solution to make the Push Up more manageable… and that is by doing the Straight Arm Plank.  By maintaining a plank with arms extended for a prolonged period of time, the triceps, pectorals, core and thighs are being isometrically contracted.  This means that your upper extremity muscles, trunk muscles and lower extremity muscles are still doing work, but not to the extent of work that they do when performing a full push up.  Therefore, by holding still for period of time, you are working the same muscles that one uses in a push up.  These are the same muscles, just worked in a different fashion.  The Straight Arm Plank is more manageable than a standard push up.  To get better at Push Ups, put Straight Arm Planks into your weekly fitness routine.  Over a series of a few weeks, you will notice a huge improvement in your Push Up performance.

Sometimes a Push Up can be a challenging and daunting task.  To get better at this movement, you have to start somewhere.  That is why instilling these little habits into your program will help to improve your efficiency and effectiveness of the Push Up.  Remember, practicing these sometimes overlooked movement and slowly sprinkling them into your exercise routine will make a more improved individual physically in the future.  Perhaps do a set of 30 seconds of Straight Arm Plank before your exercise routine.  2-3 days a week of this will make significant improvements to your fitness and physical performance.

Here’s a great video on some instructions on how to properly perform and modify the Elbow Plank and Straight Arm Plank.

 

Now go do some planks.

Jan 21

What are “Good” Carbs and what are Bad “Carbs”?

pepper patties vs. banana

Sugar.  Sugars are carbohydrates.  When speaking in terms of exercise physiology and the function of a carbohydrate, they are used to create energy for various purposes inside the human body.  Carbohydrates are used to provide energy to create muscular movement so the human body can move effectively in our everyday lives.  Carbohydrates are also used to create chemical reactions in the human body that are involved in muscle resynthesis, the repairing of damaged muscle cells.  In addition, when looking at how carbohydrates are utilized during physical activity, they play a large role in making the body perform during athletic activity and exercise.

There are a lot of different viewpoints on what carbohydrate would be the best to choose from to consume to benefit physical activity, exercise and athletic activity.  So what’s the best?  In order to get a better understanding of what a “good” carbohydrate is, we must first grasp how carbohydrates work to create energy for physical activity, how they help repair muscle tissue and how they can be converted to fat.

Carbohydrates are critical to creating movement in the body.  When we want to create a movement, carbohydrates in the form of glucose in the blood stream break down through a chemical process and produces ATP.  The ATP will disassociate and produce energy when we desire a certain movement.  In exercise we need to produce a sufficient amount of ATP to be able to run efficiently, perform resistance training and have an overall effective workout session.  In order to produce ATP, we need enough carbohydrate to be able to perform our desired form of physical activity.  When looking at carbohydrates in this manner, eating carbohydrates around exercise is a good thing.  Therefore, this would be a good time to consume your carbohydrates.

A beneficial time to consume your carbohydrates would be after a bout of moderate to intense physical activity.  In instances of moderate to intense physical activity, we are usually talking about after a 30 minute or more exercise session of prolonged running or resistance training. The rationale behind consuming a carbohydrate source after exercise is that the body utilizes ATP once again for repairing the muscles that have been stressed throughout the exercise session.  Muscles will bond onto sugars in the blood stream and break them down into ATP in order to fuel the muscle cells that have been stressed to latch onto proteins in the blood stream.  The muscle grab onto proteins in the blood stream to fill in the micro tears that have been induced by the exercise session.  Therefore, in the case of muscular resynthesis, the body will utilize carbohydrates after a bout of strenuous exercise to repair muscle.  This will benefit recovery after the exercise session and the days following exercise.  This is a very beneficial time to consume carbohydrates.

Now that we know when to consume a carbohydrate, let’s talk about what types of carbohydrates are the best to consume versus the one’s that will not benefit us before and after exercise or any other time.  Any carbohydrate that comes from it’s raw and natural state will always trump a carbohydrate that has been denatured or refined.  For example, fruit comes from a very natural state… “natural” meaning it came from nature.  I can go outside and pick an orange from a tree in my back yard.  Carbohydrates such as fruit and unrefined grains seem to be the safest bet because they sit well in your stomach and do not elicit a gastrointestinal distress syndrome as prevalently as refined carbohydrates.  These natural, unrefined carbohydrates do not seem to bloat the human body as much as carbohydrate such as bread, breakfast bars and pastries.  Most of the time, it appears that a carbohydrate that has not undergone a period of refinement or processing will digest in the stomach easier and not cause adverse reactions on the body.  Therefore, carbohydrates those come from natural sources, such as trees or the bulk section of a natural food store that have no other ingredients in them, are a “good” carbohydrate.

On the other hand, carbohydrates such as table sugar, cereals, breakfast bars and bread more often than not seem to make the body move slower, give individuals symptoms of bloating and gastrointestinal distress, like burping, farting and nausea symptoms.  Theories behind this rationale are that a denatured and processed food is more difficult for the digestive system to break down and utilize as ATP.  The other additives that are added into processed carbohydrates are believed to cause an inflammatory response in the digestive tract and cause bloating and gas like symptoms.  If there body cannot recognize a simple form of breaking a carbohydrate down to utilize for energy, it will delay the digestion process and also cause adverse reactions which will slow down efficiency during and after exercise.  In addition to slowing down energy production during exercise, the refined and denatured carbohydrates will be present longer in the stomach and cannot be utilized as energy as efficiently, leaving excess carbohydrate just sitting there.  When carbohydrates are not utilized in a timely manner, the body will recognize this as a means for storage, in which case fat cells will gladly convert left over carbohydrates to make themselves larger… and fatter.  Therefore, “bad” carbohydrates are refined and denatured carbohydrates that come in a package, cereal box or in the form of bread on the shelf.

Carbohydrates are a good thing for the human body.  We just need to discern when to consume them and make sure that we have a good reason to consume them.  Adopting a solid exercise routine will help our bodies to utilize carbohydrates and give benefits to the function of our bodies throughout our everyday lives.  We also need to know why certain carbohydrates make us feel the way we do after we eat them.  Just make sure to eat the “good” carbohydrates and exercise regularly and you should feel amazing more often than not when eating carbohydrates!

Nov 11

Pigeon Stretch: Why it’s so good!

The pigeon stretch is a great stretch for a number of reasons.  This stretching movement can help increase mobility of the hip, improve the effectiveness of your exercise routines and decrease the likelihood of hip injuries while solving hip pain issues.  The “pigeon” stretch is traditionally a stretch that assists with external rotation of the hip joint.  There are a number of different muscles that live in the hip joint.  These muscles are argued to be some of the strongest muscles in the body which are responsible for the most utilized movements of the human race, walking.  We use our legs arguably more than any other part of the body throughout our everyday lives.  Therefore, assisting the function of our legs is beneficially to our functionally movements in our daily activities.

Pigeon Full Front on Inclined Surface Angle Final

Continue reading

Dec 31

Dynamic Stretching Before Doing your Chores!

Cleaning sucks

Chores.  Chores around the house.  Chores in the back yard.  Chores in the front yard.  Chores in the side yard.  Dishes, laundry, sweeping, raking, picking annoying little things up off the ground that you have procrastinated doing for the last 3 weeks.  Maybe the refrigerator needs to be cleaned out too?  That spilled beer/milk combination is turning an astounding color and has been for the past month.  Oh chores, the word chores means doing stuff that you really don’t want to do.  You work all week and since you are inside your house for once, all you want to do is sit down and NOT DO CHORES.  Let’s face it, chores are an absolutely dreaded activity.  But wait… life doesn’t have to be so terrible when it comes to getting your infinite list of chores completed.  Luckily utilizing fitness into your chore routine will numb the pain!  Fitness + chores could quite possibly make your chore doing… dare I say, fun. Continue reading

Nov 30

Back Strengthening for Desk Workers

 

Cover Desk Worker Back Pain

I work with a lot individuals who work at desks all day to make a living.  While sitting at a desk, sometimes we forget about how sitting for prolonged periods of time can affect our bodies.  It’s not like we don’t know that sitting down in the same position will cause pain to our back and hip joints, we just get so tied up and busy with working at our desks and forget about it.   We also know that having good posture will solve a lot of the issues that cause back, hip and neck pain.  Well, what’s the problem then?  Why are so many people who work at desk jobs complaining about achy necks, pain up and down the middle back, tightness in the hips and symptoms of sciatica?  The answer could be: Continue reading

Oct 27

Elastic Band Training Vs. Free Weight Training: What’s better?

Elastic Band Training Vs. Free Weight Training: What’s better?

elastic-band-bicep-curls

Elastic resistance offers a variety of benefits to any training program.  The use of elastic resistance can be beneficial for injury prevention, sports performance enhancement and general resistance training.  Elastic resistance bands are also inexpensive and convenient.  In some cases elastic resistance has been shown to elicit more muscular activation throughout resistance training.  Any way you look at it, elastic resistance training is a great tool to improve the effectiveness of any exercise routine.  The following article will give some general insight on how elastic band training will affect your resistance training routine. Continue reading

Oct 08

Kids are the future! Resistance Training is GOOD when they’re young

health and fitness boy 15

Kids are the future!  Resistance Training is GOOD when they’re young

                My days as an adolescent young boy were pretty rough.  I had kind of an interesting hand of cards dealt to me where there was not a lot of social support available to me.  So I ended up turning to something that I eventually turned into a career… and guess where that was.  THE GYM!  When I was a young buck around the awkward age of 12, I started to lift weights at a local gym.  I may have not had any idea what I was doing Continue reading

Oct 08

The Value of Nutrition Over Exercise in Weight Loss

bad-diet

The Value of Nutrition Over Exercise in Weight Loss

                Exercise is critically important toward maintaining healthy function in the human body.  Performing resistance training will help regulate certain hormones in the body and train the body to utilize fat as a fuel source more efficiently.  Performing steady state cardio for 20-30 minutes has been shown to utilize fat as a fuel source when performing this particular mode of exercise.  Continue reading

Jul 28

Set a goal, keep it fresh!

Goals

Complying to an exercise program, keep it fresh

There are many times when people come to me asking for nutritional and fitness advice. Go figure, it is what I do for a living. So I always take up these opportunities because I thrive on seeing people achieve their goals and improve their lives. Usually, what I do is first establish some sort of foundation of fitness by designing a balanced exercise regime consisting of injury prevention techniques, some strength training and a flexibility and regeneration aspect as well. I always imply that acquiring goals through health and wellness takes time, a lot of it. In fact, noticeable changes usually won’t start occurring until 18 weeks after adhering to a program and actually following through with the process… Therefore, it takes patience as well. Continue reading

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