Flabby Arms, Bigger Guns & Fat-loss: Q&A with Josef
Big News
Thank you sooo much for helping me to make it through my first solid year of TBYW’s newsletter! Thank for reading!!!
Quote #12
“How easy it was… [Instead of going to the gym] I’d head over to the Royal Canadian Pancake House.” – Sylvester Stallone,
On how he gained 40lbs and over 8 inches on his waist in 3 months for his role in the movie Cop Land
Obesity mystery solved!!! If you eat crappy food and skip the gym, then you’ll get fat.
Quick Tip #12 – What Time is It?
Beside clothing and a place to work-out, THE single MOST IMPORTANT piece of equipment that you need to have workouts that yield results is a timer. Yes, a timer. You absolutely NEED a way to keep track of your rest periods – a Nike Triax watch with an interval timer does the job nicely (you can pick one up for $30 on E-bay).
Most people go to the gym and do an exercise and then wait until they feel like doing it again, or until they’re done talking, yet wonder why they are not making any progress. Improper rest periods can turn a strength workout into a fat-loss workout (you’ll end up smaller, but NOT stronger with the same exercises), or a fat-loss workout into a growth workout (you’d end up bigger, but NOT leaner with the same routine).
Recipe #12: 5min. Meals – Low Carb Quesadilla
Everyone loves quesadillas, but for most people the combination of highly refined carbs and goo-gobs of fat make them a bad choice. Here’s how you can have your cake and eat it too. Click here to enjoy.
Flabby Arms, Bigger Guns & Fat-loss: Q&A with Josef
I’ve been getting a bunch of questions from non-clients that I haven’t had the time to answer. So, I picked the 3 most popular ones and am answering them here.
Q: How many reps should I do for fat-loss?
A: What is important is how long the set takes, or the time that your muscles spend under tension. For fat-loss it should be between 45 and 75seconds. If a rep takes you 4 seconds, then between 10 and 20 reps will get the job done. Your reps actually have to take 4 seconds though, 3 seconds down, pause for a beat and push back up explosively.
Since you must change your workout every 4wks to ensure progress, in month #1 you can do 3 sets of 10 reps, 60 seconds of rest; month #2 you can do 2 sets of 20, 30 seconds rest; month #3 you can do 3 sets of 12, 45 seconds of rest. You should be in and out of the gym – including intervals – in 60min.
Also, be sure that you are choosing exercises that make sense. Fat loss is about getting as many of the muscles in your body working at once so that you can burn more calories during your workout, and then way more for 36hrs afterwards. So, choose push-ups over a tricep isolation exercise, and split squats over the inner/outer thigh machines.
Split squats get your inner and outer thigh, the tops of your thighs (quads), the back of your thighs (hamstrings), and all the muscles in your butt; plus they improve balance, coordination and flexibility, can reduce future risk of injury, and improve your cardiovascular fitness – all at the same time.
Q: [Lady Asking] I hate my arms – especially the giggly fat in the back. What is the best exercise to tone up my arms?
A: Chewing. Far and away the single most important factor in toning any body part is nutrition. If you don’t eat better then you won’t drop the fat that is currently covering up your muscles. Being “toned” for girls, and “ripped” for guys is all about having less body fat. Right now, all of the muscles in your body are in exactly the shape that you would like them to be. The problem is that you cannot see them because you have too much fat under the skin.
One McFlabby sandwich please.
Its mostly what she eats.
- 1. You need to eat better, and the most important thing there is to get rid of the refined and starchy carbs in your diet. So for breakfast replace your English muffin with butter and jelly, with 1 whole egg + 3-4 egg whites, scrambled with cheese and some of your favorite vegetables. Snack on cottage cheese, nuts, veggies, and low-carb protein shakes. At lunch, get the sashimi with no rice. For dinner have steak with broccoli topped with garlic and olive oil. This will get your body burning fat big time.
- 2. Get on an intelligent fat-loss exercise program. I gave one away this summer in my newsletter, so, click here to see it.
Q: [Man Asking] I’ve been working out for a long time now, but my arms really aren’t growing. What am I doing wrong? What are the real arm exercise that will get my guns to grow.
A: I want you to take a look at these picture and notice what two things they have in common.
A gymnast (BTW, you would NOT beleive the gross stuff that comes up when you do a google seach for gymnast)
An olympic lifter
- 1. They are all jacked.
- 2. They do NOT do direct arm work – no curls, no press downs, no kick backs. Just heavy compound lifts and body-weight exercises (in the case of the gymnast).
I’m going to guess that your routine looks something like this:
Monday – chest
Tuesday – back
Wednesday – legs
Thursday – arms
Friday – shoulders
I used to do a routine that looked like that too. I spent nearly a decade on the body-part split, body-builder-ish lifting and made essentially NO progress in that time. Then, I got a little smarter over the past few years and moved to 3 full-body workouts per week, at 45-60min. per workout, for growth and I gained 45lbs of muscle. In my opinion, that is a lot of muscle.
Most guys think that more training = more muscle. Nothing could be farther from the truth. At the end of a workout you are in fact smaller and weaker than when you started. It is only between the workouts that your body compensates and gets bigger and stronger. You are not a pro body-builder. You do not have the genetics to recover from their workouts, nor do you have the pharmaceutical assistance to recover from their workouts.
- 1. You need to eat animal protein 5-6x/day. It doesn’t have to be huge quantities, but you need some every 2-3hrs so that your body has the raw material to recover.
- 2. You need to get 8hrs of sleep per night to enhance your recovery. Unless you are one of the very few and very lucky people that can grow on not much sleep, get to bed on time.
- 3. Get a new workout plan. Try this on Monday, Wednesday and Friday – alternate back and forth between workouts.
Workout A: Dead-lift, bench press & row – 4 sets x 4-6 reps each, 3min of rest between sets.
Workout B: Squat, military press, chin-up (use extra weight if necessary) – 4 sets x 4-6 reps each, 3min of rest between sets.
Yes, that really is it. This could easily result in more growth over the next 4wks than you have had in the past year. If you try this instead of your old routine for a month, what have you got to lose? You haven’t really made much progress anyway, and it probably wasn’t going to start working anyway.
Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock
We are in THE last month of the 3rd quarter of 2007, how are you doing with the fat-loss goals that you set for yourself at New Years? If you don’t know, or don’t like the answer, then you’d better click here to start making some progress before 2007 comes to a close.