"Common Sense" Fitness Training
As a personal trainer I get to hear all the bad ideas clients have about “How to get fit”. I also get to see all the terrible stuff people are doing in the gym. With all this material to work with I have created a list of the worst fitness mistakes people make regularly.
So you’ve decided to build some muscle. Whether you’re looking to build huge muscles or just wanting some nice tone curves, you’ll need to eat right. The eating strategy I’m about to give you is not designed for gaining weight. It’s designed for building muscle.
“But Mike, What’s the difference?”
An eating strategy designed for gaining weight isn’t focused on minimizing fat gain. So if you want to just gain weight, eat as many calories as you possibly can (5000+ calories per day) and you will definitely gain weight.
But if you want to gain muscle mass while minimizing fat gain, keep reading.
Our world is packed full of fitness marketing that promotes every cardio program someone can dream up. Usually giving you unrealistic expectations for doing their DVD workouts, using their cardio equipment, or joining their cardio club. With all this hype flying around, cardio must be the only thing you need for all of your fitness dreams to come true …… Right !?!?!?!?!
OF COURSE NOT, but including cardio in your fitness program does have some nice benefits.
“But Mike, I would rather catch my hair on fire than spend hours per week doing cardio. So does that mean I should give up on trying to get fit?”
Continue reading “The 3 Pillars of Fitness – Cardio Edition”
Continuing on with the 3 Pillars of Fitness series, I will be discussing the importance of your diet and what happens if you skip this pillar of fitness.
First, I would like to start by saying I hate all fad diets you’ve found throughout the internet. (probably) OK maybe I haven’t studied all 1,359 fad diets that exist out there, but until I come across one that makes sense I will hate them all equally.
I know we are all hoping to discover a magical eating strategy that will let us eat whatever we want and deliver extraordinary fitness results, but it’s never gonna happen. The sooner we become OK with that, the sooner we can just start eating right.
The 3 pillars of fitness are the factors that will account for 95% of your fitness success/failures. They are:
All three of these pillars play a crucial role in your overall fitness.
“But Mike, If you were held at gunpoint and forced to choose which pillar is the most important, which would you choose?”
First I would need to know your fitness goal. Assuming you took my advice and made your goal to MAXIMIZE YOUR QUALITY OF LIFE through fitness, I would choose weight lifting.
So today I want to talk about the benefits of weight lifting and what happens if you skip this part of the trio.
You’re wanting to get the most out of your weight lifting program so you start doing some research. First, you find some meathead telling you that you should only use free weights. But then you visit your local gym and it’s packed full of machine weights so you figure they must be good for you. So now you’re thinking…..
“This is so confusing! This super buff dude said only use free weights, but this gym spent $100k on machine weights and gym owners must know what they’re doing. So how do I know which is best?”
Clearly the correct thing to do is ask your favorite personal trainer. So here’s your answer….
Continue reading “What’s better for me: Free weights or Machine weights”
“So Mike, I found this awesome new fat burner that gives everyone amazing results. I saw this guy that lost 50lbs in 90 days and this woman that lost 100lbs in less than a year. Do you think I should take it?”
I get asked these kinds of questions from time to time. It’s not suprising that so many people get fired up about taking fat burners when they see their dream come true results in an infomercial, magazine, or website. The idea of getting “The Biggest Loser” type results in a pill is very enticing. But the sceptic in all of us has to wonder “Could those type of results really happen for me?”
Well, I’m here to tell you the absolute answer to that question is ……
“Mike, I know you mentioned in a previous post that I need to lift heavy weights. So what’s considered heavy?”
Glad you asked.
Before determining how heavy of weights you should be lifting, you’ll need to choose which weight lifting goal you’d like to achieve. Your three options are:
Continue reading “How heavy do I need to go in the weight room?”
So by now I’ll assume you’ve read my previous post on proper diet “You can’t outwork a bad diet ……….. so do this” If not, go to http://www.sarcastictrainer.com/?p=422#more-422 and get the basics for healthy eating.
Now that you have the basics, I’m sure you’ve downloaded the My Fitness Pal app. Then I’m sure you entered the correct calorie, protein, carb, and fat goals. And finally you started entering the foods you eat daily. If you’re like most of my clients, you’ve probably discovered that you don’t eat enough protein.
91% of all people that walk into the gym say they have the same fitness goal. To lose weight. With that exact goal in mind, I have listed the three most effective steps towards losing weight.