Motion Health & Fitness

Category: weight training

  • For Exercisers, Prepare & Repair

    For Exercisers, Prepare & Repair

    Diet and nutrition are the critical counterpoints to a regular exercise program. Both proteins and carbohydrates are essential for preparing for your workouts, as well as for recovering from them.
     
    To feed the rigorous demands of working out, you need to prepare your body for exercise and then repair it from the associated stresses. Proteins and carbs provide both the fuel that drives you during your workouts, as well as the building blocks that help you recover.
     
    If you don’t eat before exercise, you won’t have adequate fuel to get you through an intense workout. Instead, you’ll feel tired and weak and have limited endurance. That’s because complex carbs provide the energy that fuels muscle contractions.
     
    Carbohydrates are broken down by the body into glucose, which is used as energy. Any glucose not immediately used is stored in the muscles and the liver, in the form of glycogen.
     
    Glycogen is the source of energy most often used for exercise. Because it is immediately accessible, glycogen is used for any short, intense bouts of exercise, from sprinting to weight lifting. Glycogen also supplies energy during the first few minutes of any sport. Though fat helps to fuel activity during long, slow-duration exercise, glycogen is still needed to help break down the fat into something the muscles can use.
     
    Adequate carbohydrate intake also helps prevent protein from being used as energy. If the body doesn’t have enough carbohydrate, protein is broken down to make glucose for energy. That’s undesirable because proteins are the building blocks for muscles, bones and other vital tissues.
     
    Though carbohydrates are the human body’s key source of energy, not all carbs are created equally. Simple carbohydrates, or sugars, can cause a spike in blood sugar, thereby stimulating excess insulin production, which causes a fast drop in blood sugar. This creates a vicious cycle of hunger and eating, followed by more hunger and more eating. Stick with complex carbohydrates of the fibrous variety, such as legumes, brown rice, whole oats, and vegetables. These are digested slowly and do not cause a spike in blood sugar (glucose).
     
    Depending on your ability to break down food, you need at least an hour, perhaps 90 minutes, to properly digest before commencing exercise. You only need a small amount of food (about 200 calories), primarily consisting of carbohydrates. Small portions of food are easily broken down and digested, providing more immediate energy.
     
    However, carbohydrates are also vital in the post-workout period. Eating carbs in your post-training meal will kick-start the muscle-building process. If you lack carbohydrates, you’ll fail to support the growth process. That’s because muscle glycogen not only provides fuel for hard training, but it also supports recovery.
     
    Carbohydrates directly support muscle-building by fueling muscles and helping them to remain anabolic. Energy-starved muscles quickly fall out of an anabolic state and fail to grow. Carbs also create a special hormonal environment that plays a critical role in growth — they initiate the release of insulin, which increases protein uptake by muscles. Insulin also helps muscles take in testosterone, the body’s chief muscle-building hormone.
     
    Carbohydrates aren’t just the most important nutrient for exercising muscles; they are essential for brain and CNS function.
     
    Consume at least 50 grams of carbohydrates (in addition to protein) in the meal following your workout to kick-start the rebuilding process. If you don’t gain body fat from eating that much, boost it to 70-80 grams.
     
    Also, be sure to eat an adequate portion of protein in your post-training meal; anywhere from 70-100 grams should be sufficient for muscle repair.and growth.
     
    Protein ingestion also helps athletes recover from exercise. After all, proteins are the building blocks of muscle tissue. They aid in the repair of exercise-induced damage to muscle fibers. Unless a protein-containing meal is consumed during the recovery period, muscle breakdown will exceed muscle synthesis, resulting in the loss of muscle mass.
     
    Some proteins digest faster than others. Whey protein, egg whites and some fish rapidly reach the bloodstream, while casein protein, red meat, poultry and whole eggs are slower. Faster-digesting proteins are best in the morning to reverse the overnight fast when the body sometimes falls out of a growth state. They’re also best before and after training, when the body needs immediate sources of protein to help prevent muscle breakdown. At other times of day, slower-digesting proteins do just fine.
     
    Proteins and carbohydrates are best eaten together because they work synergistically, upgrading the ability to drive amino acids into muscles and resulting in growth.
     
    Adults should get 45 percent to 65 percent of their calories from carbohydrates, 20 percent to 35 percent from fat, and 10 to 35 percent from protein, according to the National Academy of Science.
     
    A triathlete, marathoner of other endurance athlete might get 60 percent of their daily calories from carbohydrates and 20 percent each from fats and proteins. But a dedicated weight trainer or body builder may lower the percentage of carbs and increase the percentage of protein, finding a balance more along the lines of 50 percent carbohydrates, 20 percent fat and 30 protein.
     
    Some people might have a hard time breaking their daily macronutrient intake into percentages. For these people, keeping track of their total protein ingestion might be easier.
     
    The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for protein for persons over 18 years of age, irrespective of physical activity status, is 0.8 gram per kilogram of body weight per day (1 kilogram equals 2.2 pounds).
     
    However, many sports nutrition experts (American College of Sports Medicine, American Dietetic Association) have concluded that protein requirements are higher for athletes.
     
    The protein recommendations for endurance athletes are 1.2 to 1.4 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, whereas those for resistance and strength-trained athletes may be as high as 1.6 to 1.7 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
     
    Remember, you’ll get the most out of your training if you prepare for and repair from your workouts. Pushing your body hard to improve health and fitness requires you to nourish it. By giving your body everything it needs, you’ll get the most out of it.
  • How to Get the Abs You Desire

    How to Get the Abs You Desire

    Abs — everybody wants them. The truth is, everybody’s got them. Yes, underneath the varying amount of belly fat that most of us possess, lies a shapely wall of muscle. 

    The rectus abdominis are two parallel muscles running vertically on each side of the anterior wall of the abdomen. In the abdomens of people with low body fat, these muscles can be easily seen and they are commonly referred to as “six packs.” However, some people have “four packs,” “eight packs” or even “ten packs” that are plainly visible. Simply being thin is usually enough for the ab muscles to be prominent, even without conducting ab exercises.
     
    While many people desire the classic six-pack look purely for aesthetic reasons, the rectus abdominis is an important postural muscle. Strong abdominals can help to reduce lower back pain, improve balance and stability, and also prevent injuries. So, ab exercises are critical for all of those reasons, but not for trimming fat, which they won’t. Don’t fall for the myth that doing abdominal exercises will cut the belly fat hiding your abs and give you a ripped stomach.
     
    The rectus abdominis also assists with breathing and plays an important role in respiration when forcefully exhaling, such as during exercise. It also helps to keep the internal organs intact and in creating intra-abdominal pressure, such as when exercising or lifting heavy weights. Yes, your abs are important for more than just outward appearance.
     
    The abdominal muscles are present in everyone. There is little need for most people to perform ab exercises, such as crunches, to make them “pop.” The reason why most people’s abs aren’t visible has nothing to do with a lack of ab exercises; it’s because they have too much abdominal fat covering the underlying muscles for them to be seen.
     
    Once you strip away the fat, the ab muscles are clearly visible. If men drop their body fat percentage into the range of 10-12 percent and women to 15-17 percent (sorry ladies, but you typically hold more belly fat and have a higher body fat percentage than men), your abs will become noticeable. Then you can really begin focusing on ab exercises, such as planks, hanging leg raises, ab wheel roll outs and jackknives on a stability ball.
     
    In the meantime, your focus should be reducing the amount of visceral and subcutaneous fat in your stomach, which is hiding your abs right now.
     
    What is visceral fat and subcutaneous fat?
     
    Visceral fat surrounds your internal organs. It takes more effort to lose and it is dangerous. Excess visceral fat interferes with liver function and metabolic function. This leads to high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and even some cancers. Research has shown that the size of your belly is a relatively reliable indicator of the health risks linked to visceral fat.
     
    Subcutaneous fat is stored just underneath the skin. It is the type of fat that you can easily pinch or grab hold of, and it is apparent on the stomachs of most people. However, subcutaneous fat is not necessarily unhealthy. It may not look good to you, but it is not nearly as hazardous to your health as is visceral fat.
     
    Obviously, lifestyle choices affect the amount of body fat you carry. Being too sedentary, not exercising enough and eating an unhealthy, high-calorie diet will cause you to store more, and burn less, fat.
     
    Another culprit is a lack of sleep. While the specific amount of sleep that’s best varies by individual, the National Sleep Foundation recommends seven to nine hours a night for most adults. Researchers have found that the number of hours you sleep affects your metabolism. When you’re sleep-deprived, it’s harder to manage blood sugar levels and you may be hungrier for high-carb foods.
     
    Other factors include stress, which causes your body to release certain hormones (such as cortisol, norepinephrine and epinephrine) that cause fat accumulation on the abdomen and make you resistant to weight loss.
     
    Lastly, diet is primary component in fat gain or loss — and it’s fat that’s hiding your “undercover” abs. There’s an old saying: Abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym. Start by reducing your intake of sugars, bad fats and processed foods.
     
    Good fats include avocados, olives, olive oil, oily fish (such as salmon, mackerel, trout, herring and sardines) nuts (walnuts, pecans, almonds, cashews and pistachios) and flax seed/meal, which are full of omega-3 fatty acids.
     
    Processed foods, which are abundant in the modern American diet, include processed meats (deli and lunch meats, salami, hot dogs and sausages) white rice, white and/or refined bread, chips, sodas, sugary cereals and store-bought cookies, crackers, muffins and cakes.
     
    Adults should get 45 percent to 65 percent of their calories from carbohydrates, 20 percent to 35 percent from fat, and 10 to 35 percent from protein, according to the National Academy of Medicine.
     
    Based on this, I recommend aiming for the lower percentage of fats, 20 percent, and the higher percentage of proteins, 35 percent, leaving the remaining 45 percent to carbohydrates.
     
    Clearly, exercise is important if you want to have a flat stomach, much less ripped abs.
     
    Activities such as running, cycling or jumping rope are all excellent calorie burners and are great for the heart, your most important muscle. Minute per minute, cardio burns more calories than weight training, so it is very effective at reducing fat mass and body mass. However, those last two words — body mass — are critical.
     
    Doing lots of cardiovascular exercise will not only cause you to burn fat; it will also cause you to burn vital muscle mass. Yes, weight loss due to cardiovascular exercise can be the result of muscle loss, as well as fat loss. Yet, muscle is vital to your metabolic rate and calorie/fat burning.
     
    Compound, or multi-joint, weight lifting exercises (such as squats, deadlifts, lunges, pull ups and bench presses) are all great fat burners. What’s more, by building additional muscle you will increase your metabolic rate, allowing you to burn more calories even when you aren’t exercising.
     
    Both weight training and cardiovascular training have numerous health benefits, and both will help you trim fat and reveal that six pack hiding underneath your belly fat.
     
    Just remember that how much you eat will have a far greater impact on your weight status than exercise will. That’s because it’s far easier to take in less energy (calories) than it is to burn significant amounts of energy through exercise.
     
    That said, only weight training will give you a truly sculpted body and the shape that so many of us desire.
  • Why Strength Training is so Vital to Everyone

    Why Strength Training is so Vital to Everyone

    When most people think of weight training they think of big (or bigger) muscles. However, weight training is just a form of strength training, as is resistance training, which might not involve traditional “weights” at all.
     
    Resistance training can also incorporate body weight, bands, elastic tubing, medicine balls or even sandbags — anything that creates resistance. All strength or resistance training is simply a matter of overcoming gravity or tension.
     
    Strength/resistance training can benefit everyone because, muscles aside, it also increases the strength and density of tendons, ligaments and bones. Yes, strength training can prevent osteoporosis by augmenting bone mineral density.
     
    Additionally, strength training can lower blood pressure, improve cholesterol, improve athletic performance and prevent injury. There are also psychological benefits, such as better sleep, reduced stress, improved self esteem and greater confidence.
     
    However, for many people, improved appearance and body composition are the primary motivators. Simply put, muscle burns lots of calories and even body fat.
     
    Strength/resistance training helps maintain and combat the loss of muscle mass. Unfortunately, unless we perform regular strength exercises, we lose more than a half a pound of muscle every year after the age of 25. This loss of muscle results in a corresponding and significant reduction in metabolic rate, and it occurs in every decade of adulthood, which means continually less calorie burning over time.
     
    Think about that for a moment; by age 50, you will have lost at least 12 pounds of muscle, which is vital to functional movement, maintaining good posture and performing daily activities.
     
    Most adults don’t notice muscle loss. What they do notice, however, is the corresponding weight gain, which is actually fat gain. The problem for the average 50-year-old isn’t just that they’ve lost 5 pounds of muscle per decade since age 25; it’s that they’ve added three times as much body fat per decade.
     
    So, even if your eating habits don’t change as you get older, fat can still accumulate (meaning your weight increases) since metabolism usually slows with age. If you’re in your 40s, have been eating exactly the same way for 20 years and can’t understand why you’re gaining weight, it’s because your energy demand (metabolism) has dropped.
     
    Metabolism is the process by which the body uses and makes energy (calories) for everything from the digestion of food, to the cellular absorption of nutrients, to breathing, circulating blood, adjusting hormone levels, and growing and repairing cells.
     
    In the simplest terms, metabolism allows the body to process the nutrients you’ve eaten. Metabolism converts the fuel in the food we eat into the energy needed to power everything we do, from moving to thinking to growing.
     
    The number of calories your body uses to carry out these basic functions is known as your basal metabolic rate (BMR) — what you might call metabolism. Your BMR accounts for about 70 percent of the calories you burn every day. This is critically important since there is no way we can exercise away all the calories we consume each day.
     
    However, metabolism inevitably slows with age — as much as two percent a year. The key to staving off that decline is weight training. Muscle is the single most important predictor of how well you metabolize your food, how well you burn calories and how well you burn body fat.
     
    Strength training your large muscle groups at least twice a week is essential to boosting your metabolism. The effects of a good, consistent strength training program allow you to continue burning calories 24 hours a day — long after you’ve left the gym. Wouldn’t it be nice to burn extra calories while reading, driving or even sleeping?
     
    Without an appropriate training stimulus, our muscles gradually decrease in size and strength (atrophy). Untrained men and women can gain about 2-4 pounds of muscle and 40-60 percent more strength after just two months of regular strength training exercise.
     
    The notion that women shouldn’t lift heavy weights because they will “bulk up” is entirely false. Most women simply do not have the physiological ability to look like a body-builder, no matter how hard they train. That’s because women don’t have nearly as much testosterone in their bodies as men, and testosterone is a primary hormonal driver of muscle growth.
     
    Research shows that testosterone has significant effects on body fat percentage. Higher testosterone levels lead to a leaner body. Conversely, lower testosterone levels result in a fattier body. This is one reason why, generally speaking, women naturally have more body fat than men. It also means that women usually have to work harder than men to build muscle and burn fat.
     
    Muscle also helps to maintain body temperature. Ever notice that women are often colder than men in the same environment? That’s because men naturally have greater muscle composition than women and muscle generates heat (calorie burning). More muscle = more heat.
     
    For women who want to look toned, strength-training is essential, but it will only help if they lift enough weight to properly stress their muscles.
     
    Programs vary, but the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends performing 8 to 12 repetitions of a particular strength-training exercise at a weight that completely fatigues the target muscle by the final rep. You should complete 8-10 exercises that challenge all major muscle groups.
     
    It is not necessary to train any longer than 60 minutes per workout. If you aren’t sufficiently tired by then, you aren’t working hard enough. Try increasing the load (weight), the volume (exercises, sets and reps) and/or decreasing the rest time between your sets and exercises.
     
    The ACSM also recommends training the entire body 2-3 days per week (48 hours between workouts for full body). Intermediates should aim for 3 days per week and advanced lifters should workout 4-6 days per week.
     
    If you stop exercising, muscle will not turn to fat. Muscle is muscle and fat is fat; they are entirely different body tissues. However, if you stop strength training you’ll lose muscle mass, which will make your body look less toned. You’ll also slow your metabolism, which will cause you to gain weight. That weight gain will be in the form of fat, which means you’ll likely look more flabby.
     
    In short, there are numerous valuable reasons to engage in strength/resistance training, not the least of which is to maintain your muscle mass and perhaps even gain some.
     
    Your muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, blood pressure, cholesterol, self esteem, body composition and metabolism will all benefit from it.
     
    Get in Motion. Stay in Motion.