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.

OVER-TRAINING: COULD TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING END UP BEING BAD?

Even the best of us will at one point or another be the victims of over-training. I guess it’s a bump on the road that we all have to go through, so that we can understand what it really means. The most common reason of over-training is letting ourselves get motivated by our feelings; then we stop thinking with our brain and we let our heart take over. The outcome is pushing yourself for that extra mile even though you have the gut feeling that you really should stop. It is just like the double bladed knife I mentioned in the earlier post.... leaning too much on either side and you could end up hurting yourself.

Another reason why people over-train is because they see advanced athletes and pro training like crazy; lifting heavy weights and doing long sessions of cardio with little difficulties. So they think they can do the same. But we forget that most of them have support which helps them recover faster than the average Joe, or that some of them are genetically gifted in such a way that over-training doesn’t really mean anything to them.

So what do you really have to do? You have to learn to start reading your body, and spotting the signs of over-training. There is no point in panicking, just take a step back, take that extra breath of air and think about:

1. How is your body reacting to the workout? Are there improvements or is it all going downhill?
2. Your strength; are you getting stronger or weaker?
3. How much recovery time do you take after workouts? Do you maybe need more?
4. Are you doing too much cardio?
5. How is your diet? Do you maybe need more calories or a more frequent re-feed?
6. What is your mental state like, are you feeling down?

7. Washed-put feeling, tired, drained, lack of energy?

8. Are you stressed?

9. Have you been sleeping well or are you walking around like a zombie?

10. How is your appetite? Has it decreased?
11. Are you bored of the same gym routine or diet?
12. When was the last time you really got away from the gym?

And yes, over-training has happened to me a number of times too. And I had to pay the price, as we all have to. Sometime this is a small price, but sometimes it can be a lot bigger. But hopefully this post will help some of you avoid over-training or at least be able to spot the signs of it before it happens!

Love, peace and big muscles.

Sets and Reps... Is Less More?

About seven years ago, I discovered a gym in London called Muscle Works. I'm sure you have heard of it, but for those who don’t know, this gym is one of the leading bodybuilding gyms in the U.K. It's like a mecca for those who bodybuild. The owner is Savvas, or Uncle Sav as I affectionately call him, and he also is Cypriot. This gym has the best atmosphere for training. It is a proper, old school, hard-core gym. It's a no-bullshit gym. You can see the hunger in its patrons to be the best. It is a very competitive atmosphere, and it is a great place to feed from the motivation in the air.

http://www.muscleworksgym.co.uk/

Anyways, Uncle Sav and I were discussing the amount of sets per exercise. This was back in a time when I would do 3 sets of each exercise which, if you do the math, added up to 12 sets. Basically, 3 sets of 4 exercises. He asked the question none have asked before as we have all been mainstreamed to do the 3 sets since we began our exercise routines. "Why three?"

I didn’t know what to answer. It was something I had placed little thought into before. He pressed further: "If 3 is good, 4 is better, and 6 will be the real deal, so why not do 6 sets per exercise?"

At that point, he introduced me to the concept of over-training [more on this subject to come]. It is important to pay careful attention to your body and the feeling you have after each set. It can be true that after the second set, you have reached your "peak" and any set thereafter would only mean over-training. In other words, you would push your body into catabolic state. This, as any bodybuilder would agree, is exactly the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish. It would be working backwards instead of forward. So, the question then remains: How can we prevent pushing our bodies into catabolic state while still working hard enough to reach our goals?

Too much of a good thing, as is always the case, turns into a bad thing. It is important to focus on intensity moreso than quantity, back to the old adage about quality being superior to quantity. This is especially true in all aspects of fitness, whether you are building muscles or maintaining firmness. The biggest detriment to reaching your desired physical condition is over-training. It is important to pay attention to the signals of your body. When your muscles feel fully pumped, and the burning sensation is prominent, learn to stop. It is sometimes difficult to realize that it is time to stop because we often train with our hearts instead of our brains [more on this topic to come]. Our instinct is to keep pushing ourselves and fight through the pain, to feed our ego with our impressive number of sets and weights, but ultimately, the important thing (our goal) is being pushed further and further away from us.

So, instead of paying so much attention to our egos, we should pay more attention to our bodies, and we will reach our goals more effectively, save our energy for other aspects of our life, and we will be happier and in better physique. But by doing that extra rep, which we are conditioned to do, might actually backfire, and you lose what you achieved in that exercise.

Give one-hundred percent in two sets (instead of three or more) lifting your full weight capacity, doing the maximum reps at that weight... in other words, your 100%, would be equal of doing 3 to 4 sets of 60% or less.

Less is better at the end of the day for achieving our fitness goals. High intensity, less training. Make that your new mantra.

Love and Peace and big muscles.