SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO THINK "OUT OF THE BOX" TO SEE BETTER RESULTS...

As I had mentioned on one of my previous video blogs, I was going to talk about how sometimes you have to trick your body in order for it to respond well. About 5 weeks ago, I began my contest preparation and everything was going great up until week 4. For some reason I felt that my body was not responding well to the cardio. During my training, I was looking and feeling more depleted and tired I began to wonder why.

I decided to take a moment and think about it from ‘outside the box’. To be honest, I hadn’t really stopped cardio, even from the off season, I would train 3 times a week, 30mins in the winter and as the summer was approaching, I would increase it to 5 times a week- I live in Cyprus so yes I wanted to look good for the beach.

 I slowly starting to come to the conclusion that the constant cardio had caught up with me and as a result, the training was refusing to show any signs of change; in terms of both burning more fat and decreasing body fat. Like it or not, our bodies are not made to be ultra lean with very little body fat. Our bodies are built to store fat this concept can be traced back to the Stone Age era where we had to hunt for food. Back in the day we did not know if we would have food from one day to the next, therefore our bodies needed to store that fat to survive. A bit similar to how camels store water in their humps.

Yet fast forward to today, we are now living in a time where we no longer need to stock up on our food intake. Instead, our main preoccupation is looking lean and fit by burning away any excess fat. However our bodies to a certain degree are still programmed to function the same way they functioned during the hunting/gathering era. Therefore if we are constantly exercising, at some point our bodies will react by not burning as much fat as one would desire. So what do you do when you reach this plateau?

 The answer is quite simple, do the opposite from what you were doing; if you were doing cardio 6x a week, decrease it to 3. If you were training heavy and with a slowish tempo, train fast with a fast tempo and even add a cheat meal to shock the body on the weekend. Do this practice for about 1-2 weeks and then jump back to your normal routine. I tried this tactic out myself and I must say, results can be definitely seen. I generally felt more relaxed and rested, both physically and psychologically.

At the end of the day, what is important is to always listen to your body and think outside the box. Both body and brain are highly advanced mechanisms, yet every now and again there needs to be a change-a shock-a stimulation in order for both to maintain their effective functionality.

Love peace and big muscles.

HEAVY TRAINING VS LIGHT TRAINING

The quickest answer from most would be to lift as much weight as you can while doing as many reps as possible in good form, which really works to get a muscular physique eventually.

Basically overloading on your weights will stress the muscle which leads to small tears in the muscle that will build back and grow bigger with the proper rest and diet, of course, preparing you for the next heavy workout.
But as all things in life there is a limit, and the body finally stops gaining so much or so easily.
At this point is where another training principle comes in to shock us. Lift lighter weight with higher reps to stimulate the muscle differently into growth.

But can you really build muscle with light weights and high reps? Yes indeed!

Haven’t you ever noticed that pros as well as amateurs compete in their older ages and wondered how?

A couple of factors:

1. Supplementation/Diets

2. Better Training Methods

3. More Rest

4. And more precautions with regards to their health

Everybody has heard of heavy or HIT training (High Intensity Training) you gain muscle mass with this method, thick dense muscle, but even Dorian said that HIT training affected the length of his career and he eventually had to stop competing, so is training heavy with low reps ideal? At the end of the day it truly works however you pay the price. But would all these athletes achieve what they had if they did not train heavy? Well honestly it’s a big dilemma, I would say mixing it up they could have seen better results and endured longer careers, achieving even more.

To offer you one of my training principles as an example I train 3 weeks heavy low reps and then 1 weeks moderately light and high reps, I might even throw in a drop-down or super-set to shock the muscles even more and to spice up the workout regime.

In conclusion my answer is YES, even with light weights you can achieve muscle gains, the reason being that light training increases the number of red blood vessels feeding the muscles more leading to growth while heavy training does the opposite, decreasing the amount of red blood cells supplied to the muscle but on the other hand causing microscopic damage to the muscle fibers forcing them to repair and grow.

So at the end of the day MIX IT UP PEOPLE! and try to look out of the box don't be steroid types with your workouts do not limit yourselves. Just as I do. It’s safer due to a smaller risk of injury and you don’t really get bored of your workout, keeping things interesting. Remember variety is the spice of life!

The video below is with me,Neil Hill, Kris Gethin and Marika Johansson using the Y3T training principle for a quad workout

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Peace and Love and big muscles