The Fitness Journal

Today we have a guest article from Alwyn Cosgrove, the exercise guru from Warp Speed Fat Loss.

The Problem with Weight Loss: Your Body Will Do The Opposite.
By Alwyn Cosgrove

Homeostasis is the property of a living organism, that regulates its internal environment so as to maintain a stable, constant condition.

When you don’t drink enough water in the short term — often the body retains water. It attempts to maintain homeostasis by counteracting the stresses we put on it.

When you drink a lot of extra water - your body excretes more water to maintain balance.

When we weight train — we actually break down muscle tissue. And the body responds by building new muscle. It attempts to maintain homeostasis by doing the reverse of the stimulus we placed on it.

When a male takes supplemental testosterone — the body shuts down its own production in a bid to maintain homeostasis.

When we immunize children against disease — we actually inject them with a small dose of that disease. The immune system recognizes the vaccine as foreign, destroys it, and ‘remembers’ it. When the virulent version of an agent comes along, the immune system is thus prepared to respond. In order to prepare the body to defend against a disease - we expose it to the disease - and it responds by doing the opposite - it destroys the disease.

In almost every situation I can think of, the body tries to maintain homeostasis by “doing the opposite” of the stimulus.

How does this apply to weight loss?

Now we know that while you are doing it — low intensity exercise burns primarily fat.

Higher intensity exercise actually burns more carb stores than fat.

But in every head to head comparison, high intensity exercise results in more fat loss than low intensity exercise - even though the more intense work may burn a lesser percentage of fat during the exercise session.

Burning glycogen results in a larger amount of fat lost than burning fat directly.

The body responds by “doing the opposite”…

Break down muscle to grow more muscle. Burn glycogen to lose more fat.

I designed Warp Speed Fat Loss training program to specifically take advantage of this ‘law’ of nature so that when your body “does the opposite” you’ll end up with faster and greater fat loss.

About the Author/More Info:

Warp Speed Fat Loss is a complete 28 day diet and training system crafted to help you lose 10,15, or 20lbs of body fat in just 28 day. To start losing weight fast visit Warp Speed Fat Loss. Alwyn Cosgrove, M.S., C.S.C.S. is a nationally renown fat loss expert whose work has appeared in magazines such as Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Men’s Journal, Self, Oxygen, and Muscle & Fitness HERS. His Warp Speed Fat Loss system is a complete Done-for-You A-Z Fat Loss Blueprint that gives you exactly everything you need to eat and exactly what to do for exercise to lose weight in record time.

Remember to sign up for my newsletter and download your free Exercise Guide.
If you are interested in me working with you to achieve your health and fitness goals, go to busy-fitness.com/online-personal-training/
Train Smart, Love Life.
Wayne

If your interested in getting the most out of your green tea, you should check out this post from Mike Roussell. I’m a big fan of green tea and given that I am living in Japan that is a very good thing. When I’m home I’m like Mike and reuse my green tea teabags. When I’m out and about (especially in summer) I often just go to a convenience store and have my choice of a huge variety of cold green teas. Mike is the author of The Naked Nutrition Guide and co-author of Warp Speed Fat Loss and he really knows his stuff.

Remember to sign up for my newsletter and download your free Exercise Guide.
If you are interested in me working with you to achieve your health and fitness goals, go to busy-fitness.com/online-personal-training/
Train Smart, Love Life.
Wayne

Training on the heavy bag is a great option if you want to loose fat and increase your power on your punchs or kicks. If you haven’t had any boxing or martial arts instruction, it would be a great idea to get some before your journey on the heavy bag. As with any training, start slowly and work on your technique before you start puttin a lot of power into your bagwork.

Some of your options include building up to doing 2 or 3 minute rounds on the bag with 30 seconds rest between rounds. Another high intensity option would be to work all out for 10 seconds and then go easy for the nextr 20 seconds. alternate this pattern until you reach your goal time of about 4 minutes.

It is best if you use wraps and bag gloves to protect your hands and wrists and as always listen to your body.

Remember to sign up for my newsletter and download your free Exercise Guide.
If you are interested in me working with you to achieve your health and fitness goals, go to busy-fitness.com/online-personal-training/
Train Smart, Love Life.
Wayne

Here is the final installment of Jason Ferruggia’s (author of Muscle Gaining Secrets and Fit to Fight) article on cardio and muscle.

Doing Cardio While Building Muscle- Part 3
By Jason Ferruggia

Intervals
The good- intervals allow you to burn a lot of calories in a short amount of time and keep your metabolism elevated long after you finish doing them.

The bad- if you are training legs two or even three times per week, you can not do intervals more than once a week without overtraining. Let me rephrase that; you can but eventually it will lead to overtraining or at the very least slow down your strength gains. You can negate this slightly by keeping your leg training volume extremely low and doing your intervals on the same day as your weight training. You can’t do five to eight sets of legs two or three days a week and 30 minutes of intervals on top of it. That’s a dead end road.

You also have to remember to do your intervals on your training days and not on off days like you might do with other forms of cardio because that will lead to overtraining much quicker.

The ugly- if you choose sprinting as your form of interval training you could get hurt; it’s an ugly truth that has to be faced. The thing that will lead to even more injuries is following faulty interval protocol advice. Normally it is recommended to do 30-60 second intervals when they are being performed on a stationary bike. A lot of people take these recommendations and apply them to sprinting. This is a huge mistage! Nobody can sprint for 30-60 seconds. Ok, not nobody; but most average people can’t do it. World class athletes can sprint for that long, but not everyone else.

Don’t believe me?

Go try it. Warm up thoroughly and try to sprint for 60 seconds straight. Let me know what happens. We have all seen the Olympics and how winded guys are after sprinting the 100 which happens to last all of ten seconds. Most of us have seen guys run the 40 and not be able to catch their breath for at least a few minutes afterwards. And that takes five seconds or less. Not only is sprinting for 30-60 seconds impossible for most people but it also greatly increases the risk of injury.

When you keep your sprint distances and times very short, you decrease the risk for injury because you never hit top speed and instead spend most of your time in the acceleration phase. This phase has the least potential for injury. For that reason, most people should be running 20-50 yard sprints. This keeps you at top speed for a very short period of time; usually little enough time to maintain form and not suffer an injury. When you run at top speed for too long the chance for a break down in form and thus an injury is greatly increased.

I would never recommend that a non athlete ever try to sprint for 30-60 seconds straight and you should never take that advice from anyone. It is faulty and dangerous. To further reduce your injury while sprinting, use adequate rest periods between sets. Also, running with a sled slows you down enough to avoid top speeds and makes sprinting much safer.

Bottom Line- Intervals are a great tool for getting ripped, however when your main goal is to get big and strong and just keep fat gain to a minimum, they should be used sparingly if at all. I would recommend sprints above intervals on a bike and even then I wouldn’t do them in true interval fashion but more of a traditional speed workout with short sprints and adequate rest periods. This will still elevate your metabolism greatly and keep you lean. Just look at the physiques of Olympic sprinters for proof of this; that his how they train. Sprint, rest… no intervals.

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle as fast as humanly possible. He is the head training adviser for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more great muscle building information, please visit http://www.musclegainingsecrets.com/

Do you want to drop some bodyfat and are already doing your metabolic resistance training, try this short HIIT session either after your resistance training or on the following day.

Pick a piece of cardio equipment and do an easy warm-up for 2-5 minutes. After you are warm, go “hell for leather” for 10 seconds, then go easy for 50 seconds and repeat the 10 seconds hard/50 seconds easy for 8-15 reps. Choose your rep number based on your fitness level - start low and build up. warm dpwn for a few minutes after you are finished.

I find this system fast and enjoyable (within reason) and it is a great metabolic training approach.

Remember to sign up for my newsletter and download your free Exercise Guide.
If you are interested in me working with you to achieve your health and fitness goals, go to busy-fitness.com/online-personal-training/
Train Smart, Love Life.
Wayne