Guest Blog Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS; Why Cardio Doesn’t Work for Fat Loss

So, I’ve been emailing  and talking with fellow trainers and gym owners about why the general population is still drawn to doing old school stady state cardio as their primary means of fat loss…

Over the past 5+ years idustry leaders like myself and Top trainers like; Alwyn Cosgrove, Michael Boyle, and Craig Ballantyne have all pathed the way providing great articles and reasearch backed by scientific studies, as well as proving better methods of fat loss.

When going over this stuff an old article quickly came to mind by Craig Ballantyne (author/contributor for Mens Health).

And instead of me trying to re-write it or summarize, I got his permission to re-print it here…

Enjoy

Why Cardio Doesn’t Work for Fat Loss

By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Cardio exercise is such a strange thing. In theory, it should work so perfectly well for all men and women, but as anyone who has tried it knows, the practicality of it just doesn’t add up.

After all, some men and women do cardio 6 hours, 9 hours, or more per week, and still have belly fat to burn. On the other hand, it works just fine for others.

British researchers wanted to get more insight into this paradox, and studied 35 overweight men and women, who weren’t previously exercising.

(Reference: International Journal of Obesity 32: 177-184, 2008).

Subjects exercised 5 times per week for 12 weeks. That’s a lot of exercise, but it helped the subjects lose an average of 8.2 pounds, which is great – I was positively surprised by the results.

So cardio will work for some people, however, in my experience, it works best in young men, who need the help the least!

Back to the study, the variance in fat loss between individuals was huge. Check this out…

The best subject lost a staggering 32.3 pounds in 12 weeks, while the worst subject actually GAINED 3.74 pounds.

The scientists think they know where things went sour. They classified the subjects into 2 groups, called the “Compensators”
and the “Non-compensators”.

The Compensators were hungrier, and as a result consumed an extra 268 calories per day, all but wiping out their cardio efforts.

Therefore, the Compensators lost the least amount of weight, and scientists believe that was due to the huge “compensatory” increase in appetite experienced by this group.

Does your appetite increase when you do slow cardio? If it does, research shows it will ruin your cardio efforts.

So if your cardio program is not working for you, check your appetite and calorie intake to see if you are “compensating” for your efforts. If you are, you might be better off using a program of high-intensity resistance and interval training (i.e. Turbulence Training) for your weight loss efforts.

As Australian Professor Steve Boucher has shown in research, interval training increases hormones called catecholamines. And increased catecholamines can reduce appetite, among other fat-burning benefits.

In the real world, few people lose 33 pounds after 12 weeks of  cardio. Heck, few even achieve an average weight loss of 8 pounds with aerobic exercise.

So again, check your appetite, and consider giving high-intensity exercise a go for your next workout program.

Beat the curse of cardio with high-intensity Turbulence Training.

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training
About the Author

Learn about the “Dark Side of Cardio” in the free report from Craig Ballantyne at www.TurbulenceTraining.com. Craig is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Optimal Fitness Express – Tabata’s!

Brutal Tabata workout today – 20 minutes of kick butt intensity over here at Rockland county’s hardcore fitness training facilty – Optimal Fitness Express style

we hit 4 – 4 minute rounds of tabata’s with 1 minute of rest in between each and we got it all on film!!!!

check out the clips below

Round 1 – Burpees and Ring Chinups

Round 2 – Face pulls and alt. front /side raises

Round 3 – kettlebell swings and kettlebell clean & presses

Round 4 – medicine ball side toss / curl up / ab wheel

 

Like I said – a complete total body workout!!!

Come try it out for yourself – www.optimalfitnessexpress.com

Optimal Kettlebell Training For Fat Loss

Kettlebells for fat loss in Rockland County     

In today’s Society it seems like all of us are plagued with ADD. Especially when it comes to exercise. We all know that we need to workout and eat right. And when we finally do get our butts to the gym – we can’t seem to find the “right program” that not only works, but allows our attention spans to focus and enjoy ourselves while doing it.

In my opinion that’s why we have such an obesity problem. We simply get bored at the gym.

And we all know what happens when you get bored at doing something Right?

Yup! We don’t do it!!!

That’s a reason why we are FAT as a society…

So today I want to enlighten you to an old school fat loss tool. It’s a simple piece of exercise equipment from russia that has been around for hundreds of years. It’s a Kettlebell – and it’s great for fat loss.

What is A Kettlebell?

A kettlebell is a cast iron cannon ball with a horse-shoe shapped handle welded onto it.

Why Use a Kettlebell?

Besides being incredible FUN – Here are the benefits of Kettlebells;

Total body exercise – with kettlebell training you have no choice but to work your entire body.

Strength and flexibility (and agility!) are developed togetherwith kettlebell training – no dumbbell, barbell, or other form of exercise will give you the same 1 – 2 punch as a kettlebell!

Metabolism maximizer – calorie-burner – Gut melter!!! With kettlebell training you will elevate your metabolism(during and for hours after exercise), burn tons of calories and literally melt fat away from your waistline

Time efficient - With Kettlebell training you will get 2 – 3 tmes the amount of work done in around half the time of traditional body building (body part split) routines or machine based programs.

You can Use them any where – As you can see from the pictures, kettlebells can be used to workout anywhere with little other equipment needed.

Even at the beach – BOY!!!

Kettlebells are excellent training tools for women and Children. Kettlebells come in all weights, and the light, rubberized ones are perfect for women and children.
kettlebell training is excellent for weight loss and body-shaping – two common goals in females – and also for preventing obesity, which is a growing problem among children today. We’ve got to get people off all the tradmills (and other aerobic machines) and fixed axis machines and into some RESULTs Producing (kettlebell) exercise.

Check this video out – then tell me the above statements are false

JZ

PS – wanna learn how to lose fat & utilize the bell with an expert Kettlebell certified instructor?  Then call 845.268.3494 to find out more information regarding Optimal Kettlebell classes. For a limited time we are offering free kettlebell classes to athlete and fitness enthusiasts by a “REAL” certified Kettlebell Expert! Call 845.268.3494 or email me (jasonz@optcfitness.com) to find out when we are holding these free classes.

Get fatter or Get leaner – your choice

So it’s September again. Its crazy how time flies’s huh?

Anyway, it’s that time of year again. You know the fall, back to school, football, and yes – the dreaded holiday season (Which is rapidly approaching btw).

Between Thanksgiving and New Years Eve – it is said that the average American gains ten pounds of fat.

Now, I’m not sure how accurate that number is, but I know one thing is for certain – the majority of people gain weight this time of year!

And when we welcome the New Year, people will join gyms and hire personal trainers in droves to lose those same ten pounds (and then some)!

I have already heard people talking about it – “I’ll try to maintain until the New Year and then start losing weight again”.

It just doesn’t make sense to me…

There is currently over sixteen weeks until New Years (I know – I remember last winter like it was last month).
So why wait over 4 months to start losing weight, especially through the 4 hardest months of the year in (terms of sticking to a fat loss diet).

Think about it, from Now till the New Year obstacles (parties and gatherings where an abundance of food and alcohol are present) are all over the place.

You have the Jewish holiday’s late September/early October (that’s for my Jewish readers out there), Halloween, thanksgiving, Christmas and Then New Years.

No wonder why people want to wait – it seems like there is not enough time to get your fitness and nutrition plan going with “full steam ahead”.

I disagree!!!

If you plan it out right and commit to the 90%/10% nutrition rule we live by at Optimal Performance, then it shouldn’t be as hard as you think.

In fact, it’s quite possible to cut sixteen to thirty-two pounds of fat by the end of the New Year – It’s only one to two pounds per week you know.

Very, very doable.

If you plan it out right you can save your cheats and bad meals for the holiday’s parties where you can enjoy burgers, holiday feasts, drink booze, etc… And still stay on track, lose fat and completely transform your body by January.

All you have to do is commit and plan your nutrition a bit – Then when you hit the New Year’s party, you’ll be ten, twenty or thirty pounds leaner.

And assuming the average American will gain ten pounds by then — you’ll be AT LEAST 20lbs leaner than your friends and be envied by everyone around you (can we say “get out that little black dress)

JZ

PS – Optimal Performance makes it easy, quick and affordable to commit to a program so you can lose weight and look great – it’s called The Optimal Fitness Express (http://www.rocklandfitnesstraining.com/rockland-countyfitness-express/)! Go check it out here – http://www.rocklandfitnesstraining.com/rockland-countyfitness-express/  we we even offer a free trial so You can see how you can get results fast – visit www.optimalfitnessexpress.com to get your own free trial coupon

Healthy Fat Loss Meals

In this day and age it has become far too easy to let our body’s go…

What I mean is with fast food being way to accessible and with peoples busy life styles it no wonder why we have an obesity epidemic on our hands. However, did you know that is really isn’t that hard to maintain a healthy diet in conjunction with a fun exercise program? Well I bet its easier than you think!

It’s all about preparation, especially with your diet or as I like to call it – supportive eating. Click the link below to check out a special treat I have for you. It’s a special report dedicated to showing you how easy it is to hook yourself up with fast, easy to make healthy meals.

And OH yeah – these healthy meal taste great too

all you have to do is visit the link below or click the “healthy meals” graphic below and you Will be redirected to a page where all i ask is that you fill out your info, then you get this great healthy eating report absolutely free!

enjoy

JZ

PS – I almost forgot if you head over there (www.fastfatlossmeals.com) and get this report, you will also have the opportunity to get 5 more health and fitness reports just like it – and they’re free too

WWW.FASTFATLOSSMEALS.COM

Learn The Insider Secrets on How To Build The ‘Optimal’ Rapid Fat Loss workout

In the past, the cornerstone of most resistance training workouts has been performing exercises in a straight set format. Essentially, this means you perform a certain number of reps for a given exercise or you perform as many reps as possible for a given exercise and then you rest anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes based on your training goals before repeating this set a certain number of times based on your goals. For more of a fat loss and lean muscle gain emphasis shorter rest periods are ideal. For more of a strength or power emphasis, longer rest periods are prescribed.

So, what’s the problem with this format?

To be completely blunt, straight sets are an extremely inefficient way to order your exercises. In most commercial gyms you’ll typically see someone perform three sets of 10 reps for let’s say the bench press, or better yet a chest press machine (boy do I hate exercise machines – more on that later). They pump out 10 reps, go to the water fountain, talk with some buddies, watch a couple of highlights on ESPN, and then gingerly walk back to the bench area (or machine area) to hit up their second set. In general, most people, guys in particular, tend to take about 3-5 minutes between sets. In the case of three sets of 10 on the bench that means it would take up to 15 minutes to complete only one movement pattern (a horizontal push). That means you’d need at a minimum of an hour to perform no more than four measly exercises! No wonder body builders spend hours in the gym.

A much more effective and time-efficient approach to ordering your exercises is utilizing the alternating set format. Here you’ll perform one exercise, rest for a short period of time, then perform another non-competing exercise, rest for a short period of time, and so forth. Alternating sets allow you to work different areas of your body when you would otherwise be resting with the straight set format. Plus, by working another area of your body with a non-competing exercise you allow your body to recover from the previous exercise(s). The result is improved training economy and density: more work accomplished in less time, the cornerstone of any sound fat loss program. In addition we can now factor in some important corrective exercises like stretching tight muscles, working on mobility, or even doing some cardio based exercises too.

Here’s a quick example of what I’m talking about

Exercise#1- Squats

Exercise#2- Push up

Exercise#3- Step up

Exercise#4- Inverted row

Exercise#5- Lo – Ab heel taps

Perform this circuit up to five times or as many sets as you can handle in a 30 minute total body fat burning workout.

Basically, instead of getting just three sets on the bench in 15 minutes, you could have gotten in three, four (maybe more) sets of five different exercises. Plus, the intensity on each exercise will be just as high as in the straight set format because in this five exercise circuit you will have full recovery before you return to any given exercise (just as you did with the straight set format described earlier).

To recap, the key to creating the optimal hormonal environment for fat loss is to perform each exercise with maximal intensity while separated by brief rest periods in order to accumulate a high volume of total body work in the shortest amount of time possible. Circuit training provides for the best of both worlds and is thus simply unmatched for simultaneously maximizing fat loss and lean muscle gain. Use the following template I use with my many boot camp clients for some killer, yet simple fat loss circuits:

Exercise#1- Double-Leg

Exercise#2- Push

Exercise#3- Single-Leg

Exercise#4- Pull

Exercise#5- Core

Here’s a workout video showing you a great circuit you can perform anywhere – heck this workout was even done on the beach

I’ll be sharing some more great circuit training workouts from my Optimal Fitness Express classes in the weeks to come

Your Total Body Fat Loss Solution

Exercise Machines Suck

FYI – if you know me at all and from the title in the article – I bet you already know what I think of them, but read the article to find out why

Exercise Machines Suck 

 

In today’s day and age we live in a technology dependant society. Almost everything we do revolves around some kind of mechanical or electrical device. This includes what just about everyone looks for in a gym. If you’re like most, when you walk into a fitness center, you usually look for the amount of equipment or how many resistance training machines there are on the exercise floor. “Is there a machine for my chest, back legs, arms etc…” This has been the biggest indicator when clarifying a gym’s effectiveness. Well, being that our population’s obesity epidemic is spreading world wide, and fitness levels have dramatically declined in the past twenty five years or so, I think it’s time to re-evaluate and determine what went wrong.

It has been during the past twenty five to thirty years when our obesity problem really started to take off. And due to the fact that our society has always been in search for the ’quick fix’, exercise really started to take off as well. Since exercise was “in”, and we desire the “magic solution, resistance training machine companies are heavily marketing their equipment. I hate to break it to you, but when it comes to getting healthy and more physically fit, nothing will yield better results than hard work, dedication, and motivation; not gimmicks or machines. Machines actually are an inferior method of exercise.

 It’s time to go back to our roots and look like we did hundreds of years ago. When you think about it, humans have always done some form of activity, and we have always been obsessed with strength and physique. So my question to you is did we have machines hundreds of years ago? My next question is as a whole, who looked better as a population, us now or mankind hundreds of years ago?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I’m not saying exercise machines are useless, everything has its place, but I can come up with a couple of dozen reasons why exercise machines are not optimally efficient. Instead of boring you anymore than I already have I’ll provide you with my top five.

Here we go:

1.) Exercise machines are NOT an optimal form of exercise for most. Exercise machines are great for isolating specific muscles (i.e. – the standard leg extension machine for the quads), but because exercise machines are anchored to the ground, your stabilizer muscles (muscle that surround your joints and protect them from injury), do NOT get developed. Exercise machines do not allow you to stabilize the weight you are lifting in three dimensions, and since daily activities such as work and athletics do require you to use these important muscles (the stabilizers), exercise machines are an inferior method of exercise.

2.) Exercise machines are NOT ideal to improve posture. Over the years in the fitness industry, I have seen an incredible amount of people that have poor posture. This includes forward head, rounded shoulders, flat lower backs, and other misalignment in spinal curvature. This is due to the lack of strength in postural muscles, making it hard to fight gravity, and since gravity is almost impossible to escape, those who can’t fight gravity efficiently will almost always have poor posture. By performing exercise on machines your body does not have to fight gravity, and on most traditional gym equipment your body doesn’t have to stabilize itself. However, by performing exercise in a prone, upright, or supine position, you can engage and load postural muscles to help with fight gravity, resulting in better posture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.) Exercise machines are just flat out BORING! I can remember a couple of years ago when I worked at a large health club filled with fancy ground based machines, I would sit and watch people go through their work outs. One day I saw a gentleman working on the chest press machine. It was hilarious. He actually appeared to be falling asleep. I mean yawn after yawn during repetitions. I think if the guy was on a lying leg press he may have actually dozed off. Now let’s analyze that situation. If he were on a flat bench performing dumbbell chest presses, do you think he would have been in that state of mind? Only if he wanted a nose job by dropping the dumbbells on his face. I have in the past and still do observe exercisers on the free weight floor. What I see is always a look of determination, motivation, and enthusiasm. My point here is that by participating in a free weight, non-machine based program, it not only forces you to concentrate and work harder, but it’s more fun, and the feeling of accomplishment is far superior than just going through the motions on exercise machines.

4.) Exercise machines CANNOT improve balance or stability. As I stated earlier, ground based exercise machines DO NOT require the use of your stabilizer muscles. These muscles not only protect your joints, but they also are responsible for your ability to stabilize and balance. Instead, try to incorporate some non-traditional methods of exercise like the use of a stability ball, or balancing on one leg, or doing some low level plyometrics. These types of exercises are extremely beneficial to increasing balance, stability, and agility. No machine can give you any of these qualities by itself.

5.) You can mimic any exercise machine exercise without the machine and get the same benefits plus a lot more. Every exercise machine that is on the market today has been developed based on movements that the human body does naturally. With that being said, you can perform any exercise machine exercise without the use of an actual exercise machine. The chest press machine is essentially a bench press, the leg press machine is a squatting motion, the rowing machine (you know the one for your back muscles) can be done with free weights, and the list goes on and on. But the catch is that when you do these movements with body weight or free weights you get all the same benefits plus the development of balance, stability, and definitely more calories burned. Let’s not forget that when you perform body weight or free weight based movements, you will always engage you core muscles.

I don’t know about you, but if I have my choice I’m sure you can guess what it is. That’s right good old fashioned body weight, free weight, or other non – machine based movements. Now, it’s important to realize that I’m not saying that exercise machines are useless, but would you rather work out for hours at a time with boring exercise equipment, or would you like to get more bang for your buck by getting more out of one exercise like a squat, some form of a press, a rowing motion, a lunging motion, or even a twisting, or bending motion? Instead of using one to two dozen boring exercise machines all you have to do is have fun while incorporating the six movements I just mentioned and you’ll be well on your way to achieving your fitness goals more efficiently and faster than ever before.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JZ

Wanna get super lean and in shape without touching a dumbell or barbell?

Here are a couple videos of some gut wrenching workouts at Optimal Performance….

they are badass!!!

And the best part is they don’t involve any machines or weights (with the exception of the prowler in the third video)

Just wanted to share these with you to show you that you don’t have to bury yourself in the gym behind a lot of iron all the time. The workouts below actually will give you an even better workout then weightlfiting anyway

enjoy..