Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Want A More Productive Workout? Here Are Nine Ways

Trust us, we understand a busy schedule, and how important your time at the gym is. In fact,
you should be reaping the fruits of your iron-induced labor every minute that you're at the gym. So to cut out the time wasters, we tapped our experts for their tips to make your workout more productive. Follow along and unleash your true muscle-building potential. 

Prepare Your Muscles

Prior to lifting weights, you need to prepare your muscles for the exercises you’re about to do during a muscle preparation phase. “To get the most muscle action out of all your pressing and pulling, it’s always better to prep the exact motions you’re going to do and do a lot of isometrics at those ranges,” says Pete Bommarito, C.S.C.S., U.S.A.W., M.A.T. Jumpstart certified. “It’s not a stretch or warmup, it is prepping the muscles to be able to properly accept the heavier load.”
Before an upper-body workout, Bommarito suggests doing the following routine:
Thumbs-Up Dumbbell Front Raise (using 2.5 lbs each hand)
Reps: 8
What It Does: Shoulder Flexion
Bommarito says: Raise weights slowly and when weights are shoulder level, do a 3- to 5-second hold, then slowly bring weights down. Raise arms into a V-shape on the way up.
Side Raise and Shrug (using 2.5 lbs each hand)
Reps: 8
What it does: Shoulder abduction and scapula elevation
Bommarito says: Raise arms out to the side so arms are parallel to the ground, then shrug shoulders to ear height so arms are raised at maximum height. As you bring arms down, hold arms out to the side for 3-5 seconds, then slowly return to start.
Palms-Up Side Raise Rotation
Reps: 8
What it does: Shoulder rotation and shoulder abduction
Bommarito says: Rotate arms so palms face forward. Raise arms out to side and at top of raise palms are facing up. At the top, rotate arms forward so your palms face down, then roate your arms palms face forward again. Hold in this position for 3-5 seconds and bring arms back down slowly.
Palms-Up Incline Rear Delt Raise
Reps: 8
What it does: Shoulder rotation and scapula retraction
Bommarito says: Lie flat facing an incline bench. Put the back of your hands together and do a T-raise, bringing arms straight out to the side with thumbs up at the top. Hold for 3-4 seconds at the top and slowly bring arms back down.
Scapula Pushups
Reps: 8-15
What it does: Scapula retraction and scapula protraction
Bommarito says: Get in pushup position keeping elbows locked. Move shoulder blades together, then move shoulder blades apart. Keep elbows locked the entire time so scapula does all the movement.

Supp Up

There's no substitute for hard work and commitment in the gym or your sport. Achieving athletic success will come from within. With that said, there are supplements that have been shown to increase weightlifting performance. Bommarito says pre- and intra-workout supplementation is key to getting the most out of training. Bommarito suggests taking 1-3 grams of beta-alanine, 5 grams of creatine,  and 100% of your recommended daily intake of vitamin B12, vitamin c, vitamin e, and zinc with a trace amount of magnesium before resistance training. When it comes to caffeine, Bommarito says, "if it's not coming from a supplement, then a 10-ounce cup of organic coffee is a general rule of thumb pre-workout." Seven grams of BCAAs during the workout will bring your gains to new levels.

Beat Your Bests
Bring a notebook and pen to your workout to write down the exercises, sets, reps, and weight that you do. This way, next time you can be sure to beat those numbers. Bommarito says to have goals in terms of body weight, body composition, muscle mass, 1-rep or 5-rep max, and vertical jump. Bommarito tests his athletes’ blood and VO2 max to get the full scope of their improvements. Regardless of the objective, Bommarito says a three-month goal is a good standard to start with.

Rest Properly
Knowing how long to take a break between exercises is crucial for improving performance in the gym. Interval training, which is based on short rests with longer periods of work, are a time-saving way to burn fat. “For people who want to optimize training in the gym, decrease the rest periods,” says Jay Cardiello, C.S.C.S. “If you’re working out for 30 seconds and for reps using machines or body weight, decrease rest to less than a minute because you don’t want the body to fully recover.” When Olympic lifting with heavy weights, Cardiello suggests resting for 3-5 minutes between sets to demonstrate maximum muscle force and power.

Take a Whiff
Believe it or not, smells can influence the intensity of your workouts. “Smelling peppermint will boost exercise performance levels and can make your exercise more rewarding,”  Cardiello says. “The scent alters your perception of how hard you're working out, which makes training sessions seem less strenuous and slower paced.” Chew on an Altoid before and during a workout or take a whiff of any minty smell to give your workouts a boost.

Train to Function
“People need to be doing more unbalanced, unstable training, posterior training, and compound exercises where you recruit more muscle fibers and joints,” Cardiello says. That means, perform movements in the gym that you might find yourself doing in everyday life. For example, Cardiello suggests that doing burpees continuously for five minutes, resting, then doing another five minutes of burpees is both an effective strength builder and conditioning workout.

Get the Gear
Being comfortable and able to move freely is key. “Wear five-toe Vibram shoes because you want to build your body on a symmetrical basis, having the least amount of contact between the bottom of your foot and the floor,” Cardiello says. “If you lift heavy, you’re going to push down into a high heel and if your body is brought down more toward the right shoe than the left, you can create asymmetrical hips, which can throw off your total strength gains.” Cardiello warns against sneakers with a bubble in the heel or an exposed heel. Reebok Nanos and Converses are two strength-training shoes Cardiello suggests.

Squat More
Training the muscles in your legs will enable you to produce more explosiveness from the ground up. Also, training legs requires more energy to repair and grow since the muscles are larger proportionate to other body parts. “When you work your glutes, hamstrings and thighs, the three largest muscle groups in the body, you create a greater afterburn effect so caloric expenditure is higher during that time,” Cardiello says. “Think of a body as one unit; you're going to expel more calories post-workout, which is very beneficial to taking inches off your waist.” Train legs to shed pounds.


Recover Right
Static stretching should be implemented post-workout to bring your body back down to a resting position. “Static stretching can range anywhere from 3-10 minutes, and stretches can be held anywhere from 15 seconds to a minute,” Cardiello says. Another post-workout tip: “Take a cold shower to expedite the recovery process of the muscle or take an alternating shower where you go lukewarm then cold alternating 1-1.5 minutes between each because this helps decrease lactic acid buildup.” Reducing lactic acid buildup will help you work out harder and for longer before your muscles slow down and you start feeling a burning sensation. Stretch and use cold water to properly recover from workouts.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

5 Reasons Your Abs Aren’t Growing

abs-main-situps
After 1000′s of crunches and seven brutally intense ab workouts per week, you’d think that it would all add up to beautiful sculpted abs right? Wrong, It’s sad and discouraging when someone puts in a TON of effort to sculpt a rock-solid, well-defined set of six pack abs, yet the results are nowhere to be found. It can be unbelievably deflating. So what’s an innocent, ab-happy person supposed to do?
One of the most redeeming things about fitness in general is that there’s typically a direct correlation between time, effort, and results. It’s a simple equation — if you do cardio 45 minutes per day, 6 days per week, you will lose a lot of weight. Given that you do the right exercises, if you follow a comprehensive chest routine and increase the amount that you’re pressing over successive workouts, your chest will grow. It’s just the way exercise and training works.
Ab development tends to be MUCH more challenging; bordering on excruciating. That’s why you don’t see six packs endlessly populating the earth. The truth is most people approach ab training completely wrong and spend their time focusing on things that aren’t effective. Here are some reasons that you might not be able to see results in your abs:

1. You Can’t See Them

This might seem brutally obvious, but at the core (no pun intended) the most important — and fundamental— piece of ab development is being able to see themIt doesn't matter if you can do the ‘Plunging, Deep V, Lower Abs Workout‘ 18 times over. If your body fat % isn’t low enough no one will be able to see what you’re packing underneath. For men, body fat should be sub-10%; for women it should be sub-18% for the ab muscles to really pop. If you want to get your body fat down to 6-pack levels, make sure to incorporate a solid dose of high intensity cardio and emphasize a healthy, LEAN diet.

2. You Try to Crunch Away the Fat

Drill it into your cranium. There’s NO such thing as spot reduction. You can’t crunch off the fat covering the lower section of your abs — nothing about our physiology supports this misconception. The only way to strip the fat from your abs is by gradually burning it off from your entire body through cardio, diet, and weight-training. Unfortunately, the fat covering the abs is usually the last to go and the first to come back, which makes getting/keeping abs all the more difficult. Stay persistent with a clean diet, resistance training, and cardio regimen and you’ll be able to maintain low body fat permanently. Abs require a lifestyle shift and a TON of discipline — not a quick fix.

3. You Workout Your Abs Every Day

Give your core a rest. STOP training your abs every day, or even every other day. Like the biceps, chest, shoulders, legs, etc., the ab muscles need time to rest, recover, and rebuild in order to grow. Would you do biceps curls, bench press, or squat 7x per week to build bulging biceps, a hulking chest, or massive thighs? Never. Try doing abs once every 3 days. That’s 2-3x per week. Not only will this allow your abs to actually recover and grow, but it’ll free up significant time to funnel into more intense, more transformative training (e.g. compound weight-lifting and cardio).
Most of your bandwidth in the gym should be spent divided across the major muscle groups (legs, chest, shoulders, back) and cardio; and then accessorized with targeted abs work. Don’t sacrifice that in pursuit of a six pack — not only do compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, bent-over barbell rows, clean & presses, and dumbbell swings shred major calories/body fat and stimulate muscle growth, they also work the core as hard — if not harder — than direct ab exercises. Big lifts are the sledgehammer; isolated ab exercises are the scalpel. Leverage both and reap the rewards.

4. You Only Do Crunches and Sit-Ups

Crunches and sit-ups primarily work the top of the rectus abdominus, aka the 6 pack muscles. Even though building up the top is an incredibly important part of a stellar midsection, relying ONLY on sit-ups and crunches will cause the obliques, transverse abdominus, and lower abs to lag behind.
Think of the transverse abdominus as a belt that runs around the waist and sucks everything in tight. Exercises like the plank can help build up the transverse and make the entire torso more compact. The obliques run diagonally along the side of the torso into the pelvis, which forms the V-cut that everyone craves so much.
The key — diversify, diversify, diversify! Incorporating bicycle crunches, hanging leg raises, and a variety of other ab exercises into your routine can help chisel out all parts of the core region, beyond just the rectus.

5. You Don’t Increase the Difficulty

Your abs won’t grow past beginner levels unless you force them to. Muscles grow based on the principle of progressive resistance, meaning that you need to increase the weight lifted, the amount of resistance, or the difficulty of the exercise if you want to see any additional growth or progress.
If you want massive legs, you need to gradually increase the amount of weight squatted — ab development works the same way. When it comes to developing core musculature, crunches and sit-ups are extremely basic and provide minimal stimulation. Instead of simply doing higher reps of something basic (ab exercises should stay between 12-20 reps per set), upgrade it by adding a heavier dumbbell/weight plate/medicine ball, or permanently shift to more advanced exercises.
For example, try crunches with a dumbbell on your chest, cable crunches, sit-ups on a decline bench, or the Lower Abs Trifecta. Adding a weight or more difficult angle can help make basic exercises significantly more difficult and kickstart brand new abdominal growth.