A Lack of Discipline Is The Nemisis To Self Esteem…

Our minds are like a delicate orchid.
If we give it attention and care, it will in return give us great beauty and enjoyment.

When we honor the commitments that we have made to ourselves, we support and nourish our inner orchid.
It becomes a continuous and positive cycle of nourishment that is only broken when our commitments are broken.

The more we honor and execute on what we strive to become, the more energy you will have to move forward.

Food for thought…

The Power Of Synergy In Body Transformation

The old saying goes “The Whole Is Greater Than Its Individual Parts” holds true when it comes to achieving fast, dramatic and permanent changes in your body.

There must be synergy between nutrition, exercise AND lifestyle management.

Instead of doing one part ALOT, do all three a little and consistently.

There are 6 areas of Body Transformation that you have full control over every day;

1. Thoughts: You are what you think..
2. Breathing: Your breathe sets the rhythm for all other functions in your body. Master Your Breathe..Master Your Life.
3. Hydration: Keep it flowing with adequate hydration. Dehydration equals stagnation.
4. Food: Create balance in your physiology by eating according to your metabolic type.
5. Exercise: Not too much and not too little. Think about movement and intensity to determine what’s right for you.
6. Sleep: getting to be on time will do more for your hormonal system than any diet pill or cardio workout will.

Ask yourself what can you do in each of these areas to create synergy in your life…

Proteins, Carbs and Fat: The Next Evolution (Part III)

I’d like to now discuss protein intake as it relates to fat loss, muscle growth and athletic performance.

Metabolic Type will dictate the quality and quantity that is needed to accomplish all of the above. Your training volume and frequency is a distant second behind your genetic based protein requirements.

Protein intake is vital for anyone looking to make quick, dramatic and permanent changes to their body. Every tissue in the body is protein-based and the body is quite sensitive to deficiencies. The function of Metabolic Enzymes, Digestive Enzymes, Hormones and Neurotransmitter (brain juice) are all dependent on adequate protein intake. Some common signs of protein deficiencies are;

chronic migraine headaches
thin hair
soft nails
flabby muscles despite doing large amounts of exercise.
chronic sweet cravings

Now the type of protein is just as important as quantity.

Certain metabolic types respond best to low fat proteins like white meat chicken, white fish and egg whites while others do better with the heavier, high purine and fat based protein like beef, lamb and salmon. Your metabolic type will determine which is better.

So how do you know if you are on target with your quality and quantity of protein?

Here are 3 things that you want to pay attention to after each meal;

1. How soon do you become hungry after the meal? (If your meal does not sustain you for at least 3 hours, you may want to look at your ratio of protein to carbs as well as your protein quality)
2. Cravings after the meal (are you craving sweets?) if so the same rule applies as #1
3. Increased energy level and mood: any good meal will be uplifting to your energy levels both physically and mentally.

To summarize:
What will determine your protein needs heavily based on your genetics.
Are you an Eskimo or an Indian? One needs heavy protein and the other light protein.

Proteins, Carbs and Fats: The Next Evolution (Part II)

Moving on to the new school view on carbohydrates, I want to explain how choosing the right types of carbohydrates for your metabolic type is critical.

The standard operating procedure is to take in a fair amount of starches in the off-season and take in little to no starchy carbohydrates as you get closer to competition.

This is a good rule of thumb but let’s take this concept up a notch.

What will determine one’s need for starch is the Carbo-Oxidation rate and Pathway..

Biochemistry 101 tells us that our body will try to produce energy from whatever fuel source that we give it. This is done via the Krebs cycle.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s just say that there are two main pathways that the body can use to get to the energy promised land. Depending on what your metabolic type is, you will have a preferred pathway.
That pathway will require more or less need for starch.

If you happen to be the type that needs more starch, you could conceivably eat starch all the way up to the show IF you know what you are doing. Or at least eat them closer up TO the show as to help you be able to train harder and help preserve muscle mass.

Take this in for now..

more to come.

Protein, Carbs and Fats: The Next Evolution

Let’s take fresh look at some long standing beliefs about nutrition. To be more specific let’s explore some long standing strategies as it relates to dieting for weight loss and physique transformation.

This first of a 3 part series will cover an important issue related to fat intake.

When the goal is maximum fat loss, the obvious thing to do would be to limit fat intake as much as possible. This may sound good in theory but when that theory is applied here’s what happens..

Consider that your steroid based hormones (needed for fat loss) are fat based. In other words, fat (saturated fat in particular) needs to be there for the body to make, estrogen, testosterone etc. When the body’s saturated fat reserves gets too low, your hormonal system will suffer.

The reality is that, it is the insulin/glucagon balance and cyclic amp pathways that will determine your rate and magnitude of fat loss. (more on this later)

To take this a step further your metabolic type will determine how much fat you will need and in what ratios.

Certain Metabolic Types can get the job done with lower amounts of saturated fats while others need TONS of it.

Summary:
1. Find out with absolute certainty what your fat requirement is by knowing your metabolic type.

some food for thought.

Fat Burning Blueprint: Part 2

How We Burn Fat?

Ori Hofmekler in his book Maximum Muscle Minimum Fat, he gives a great explanation as to how the whole fat burning process starts.

This jist of it is that your adrenal glands send a chemical called cAMP to the fat cells which gets it all started. So the variable in the fat burning equation is your adrenal glands to remain functional and responsive. That’s the cliff note version of it.

There are 2 ways that you can insure that this metabolic pathway stays open and active…

1. You can support the pathway with proper nutrition, increasing and decreasing your training loads and volumes at the right times in order to prevent burnout.

Or…

2. You can jam the pathway if it’s sluggish or not working at all. The pros to this method is that you do get it working again. The downside is that you risk breaking something in the process.

In other words you kicking a dead horse.

For example: Let’s say you’ve been dieting for 12 weeks and been using fat burners the entire time. Since you’ve been jamming the pathway with stimulants for that long, the pathway will no longer be receptive to any more “jamming”. So you loose the only real benefit to jamming a pathway which is to take your body beyond it’s natural limits.

So what do you do? Increase your fat burners? You could and risk doing some real damage to your system. Or you can focus on method #1, get the same result and come out better on the other side.

Just some food for thought.

Much Chi,

The Fat Burning Blueprint

One of my coaching mantras is that fat loss is a chemical event, not mechanical.

If losing body fat was as easy as jumping on a treadmill, burning 875 calories and getting off a quarter pound lighter, everyone would be in great shape all the time because there is no shortage of people doing this type of training.

For any exercise program to work, your metabolism (i.e. your physiology) must be able to respond to your training.

Your hormonal system will play a LARGE role in determining how and IF your body will respond to your training program at all.

All of your glands must be functional (adrenals, Thyroid, Pituatary, gonads and even the pancreas).

If your body is responding to your exercise program then thank your lucky stars.

If your body is no longer responding to your training and diet, and/or you have reached a sticking point in your fat loss, it will be from one or all of the following:

1. Your hormonal system is compromised. Is it your adrenal, thyroid, pituitary, gonads or a little bit of all of them?
Find out what it is and you will turn the fat burning machine back on.

2. Your training program is not matching you current metabolic needs.
Are you over-training or under-training? Do the opposite of what you are currently doing and watch the magic happen.

Summary:
Pay attention to your body.
When we are working with deadlines like getting ready for a contest, wedding, reunion or vacation, it is easy to get anxious.
As long a you stay in tune with what your body is telling you, you will make the right adjustments and reach your goal with ease.

Get Your Metabolism Working For You..

I have officially declared this the week of metabolism.

All Tips will be about getting your metabolism to work for you and not against you.

Tip #1:

To Know Your Metabolism is Know Your Results!

If you want to have full control over your body, you must first know the nature of your metabolism.

Here are some questions to consider…

Is it slow.. Is it fast.. or somewhere in between?

What are the specific nutrient requirements?

When do you need those nutrients?

What are your specific exercise needs?

Is your current exercise program serving your current metabolic needs?

More to come…

The Skill Of Strength: Part 2

Let’s go a bit deeper into the Greasing The Groove concept.

When setting up your training program, there’s essentially 2 things to consider;

1. Movement Pattern

2. The Intensity that you will be performing the Movement Pattern

No Matter how you slice it, there are about 7 basic movement patterns that human beings perform. Any lift, stretch, machine, or tool is looking to develop one of these movement patterns.

1. Squat

2. Lunge

3. Bend

4. Push

5. Pull

6. Twist

The 7th pattern is gait, which consists of walking, jogging and sprinting.

This system of movement pattern analysis was developed by my mentor and friend Paul Chek.

Chek Practitioners call it primal pattern assessment and development.

Now we will need to determine intensity..

There are 3 general levels of intensity for any given movement pattern;

Below Baseline: Ex: a Supine Hip Extension done on a Stability Ball is a descended version of a Squat.

Baseline: Ex: Bodyweight Squats

Above baseline: Overhead Barbell Squats or Pistols (One-legged Squats) are ascended versions of the Body weight Squat.

What will determine your intensity is your current level of skill.

The idea is to choose the intensity that will allow for the best technique.
Once this is established, you can then determine the “loading” scheme that you will need (i.e. sets, reps, rest periods, tempo etc).

To Summarize:

1. Grease The Groove with the 7 basic movement patterns.

2. At minimum strive to perform all of them at a baseline level (more to come on this later).

3. If you need to perform a movement using a high load and volume, make sure that you can do it with good form. Otherwise, you risk getting injured and/or getting poor results with your program.

#3 is HUGE especially if you are a sports or physique athlete.

In sports, there’s a risk of developing glitches in the neuro-muscular system. Think of this as a computer virus but in your body. In geek language, it’s call a faulty motor engram.

If you are a physique competitor, exercise technique will affect how you look. Good form is essential for ideal symmetry and proportions.

Let’s take the Squat as an example: Good squat form demands that the glutes be involved. If not your body will compensate and use your Quads and lower back. What will happen is that the quads will them become over developed and the buttocks under developed.

So no worries about looking like a stud in the gym. Know that you are looking at the bigger picture.
Then when you do work your way up to stud status, you will stay there.

Terrence…

The Skill Of Strength

The “Skill” of Strength… Part 1

One of the best ways to improve the results of your training is to improve the quality of your technique.

When you improve technique, you will be able to shorten your training time.

So how you improve your technique?

You do it by Greasing The Groove. In other words, focus on performing less exercises more frequently.

Powerlifters and Olympic Weightlifters spend decades focusing on 2 to 3 lifts. For powerlifters it’s the Deadlift, Squat, and Bench Press. For O lifters its the snatch and clean and jerk.

I can tell you from personal experience that my own workouts are MUCH more simple now than they were 18 years ago.

I spend 1/4 of the time training that I did then and my results are double.

What’s the variable? Skill.

Resist the temptation to try the next “shinny new thing” and stick to the basics.

You will never go wrong.