Top 5 Tips for Every Aspect of Fitness

What's up y'all? First post back since my 84 day trek. I'll be posting about once or twice a week now just to keep getting you guys good info and working on different types of posts outside of just blogging. I've definitely been using Instagram more, mostly because of the increased post engagement vs Facebook, so make sure you're following me on there if you're not you can find me at

@Greg.the.Trainer

Today I wanted to do something basic and important and give you my top 5 tips for every aspect of fitness; Nutrition, Resistance Training, Cardiovascular Training, and Lifestyle. If I had to give someone a 5 minute breakdown of the most important aspects of each one this is what I would tell them. I'll post in list form for convenience then go into a small bit of detail in each one.

Nutrition

• Eat real food most of the time: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, lean meats, and healthy fats. This is healthy nutrition in it's most simple form. EAT REAL FOOD! That basically covers it. It's ok to stray sometimes but the vast majority of the time should be spent eating real, nutritious foods.
• Eat protein and veggies first and at each meal. This should be your priority each meal, regardless of goals. If you don't directly track macros then a good goal is 1-2 palm sized servings of protein and 1-2 cups of veggies each meal. 
• Eat slowly and pay attention to your food. This is a great way to eat less food, just eat slower. If you've ever eaten with chop sticks you'll know exactly what I mean. You can also try putting your fork down in between bites. Also, practice eating without any distractions (phone, tv, computer) and think about the food you're eating. 
• Eat based on your workout each day. If you have a harder workout, eat more carbs, if you don't workout, don't eat so many carbs. The harder the workout, the more carbs you get because you need to fuel your workouts. 
• Start tracking your food but learn not to have to. Tracking your food is important when you're just starting and is great for learning portion size and daily intake. Although I recommend everyone do this as the beginning, tracking should be something you wean off of as you actually learn portions and good habits. 

Resistance Training

• Focus on compound, multi-joint exercises. Squat, deadlift, push, pull, carry, rotate. These things should make up most of your program with some accessory work following. Perfect these exercises to the best of your ability and do them often.
• Try to get as strong as possible. Strong people live longer and strength is the most important controllable factor in longevity. You should be trying to get as strong as you can in the movement patterns listed above. 
• Try to build muscle, even if you're trying to lose fat. Muscle is extremely healthy and increasing muscle mass is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself. Not to mention it makes you look awesome. 
• Keep workouts short and intense. Don't waste your time on 12 different chest exercises and 8 different bicep curls. Try to keep workouts around an hour using mostly the movement patterns listed above. 
• Lift 3-5 times per week. This will cover it for most people. Lifting more will not mean better progress and you need time to let yourself recover. Rest days are when your muscles heal and get bigger so make sure you have a few each week. That doesn't mean don't exercise, just don't have a hard lift. 

Cardiovascular Training

• Some days do low intensity, some days do moderate intensity, some days to high intensity. Variability is key here and no one form of cardio is terribly superior to the others. Walking is underrated as a form of cardio and is one of my favorites, but so is High Intensity Interval Training. To get the best results use a variety. 
• Cardio is great for health and performance but not great fat loss. This is one thing I need to try and break so many people of: you can't just do more cardio and expect to lose fat, as overall research shows it doesn't do much. This doesn't mean you should skip cardio, but just go into it with the right intentions. Cardio is great for increasing heart and lung strength as well as increasing recovery ability from resistance training. 
• Do it separately or the same day as lifting. For longer sessions you might want to do it on it's own day, which makes a good active recovery day, but shorter sessions can be don in conjunction with lifting. Do it before or after lifting, whichever you prefer. 
• Get outside sometimes. Don't spend all your time in a gym! Get outside for a walk, run, bike ride or water sport and get into nature, you'll be happier and healthier the more often you do this. 
• Do what you enjoy and stick to it. It doesn't matter what the "best" or "most effective" workout is if you're not going to do it. There's 1,000 different ways to do cardio so find what you enjoy because that's what you're going to stick with. 

Lifestyle 

• Reduce stress as much as possible. Stress, the bad kind, will make you fat. I have a full post planned for this but for now know that you should be trying to reduce stress as much as you can. Breathing exercises and daily meditation or two great ways that I do this.
• Sleep 7-9 hours every night. Not sleeping will also make you fat and it will kill you. Everyone has their excuses for not getting sleep but I don't want to hear it, I'm up at 4am every week day and still get my hours in. Want some good news? Naps count towards this. There's research showing that daily total hours is more important than just overnight hours. 
• Focus on building good habits, not quick progress. Health is a lifelong goal, not a short term sprint. Although everyone wants to lose weight right now, you need to think about building good, healthy habits that will keep you strong and healthy forever. 
• Get outside. Yes this is on here twice because it's important. Even if you're not working out outside you still should get some sun every day. One recommendation I liks is 20 minutes of sun and outdoors each and every day. 
• Move as much as possible. This one is big, maybe the biggest, at least from a health standpoint. Not moving will also make you fat and kill you and you need to try to move as much as possible. Just hitting a 1 hour workout a few times a week won't do much of anything is you're spending the other 23 hours a day sitting on your butt. Get up and move as much as possible each and every day. 

If you embrace each of these things you're setting yourself up for a long and healthy life, not to mention a hot body. Work your way through the list and see what you can do for each one. If you need help of have questions please reach out to me as I would love to help you. There's so much garbage information out there so I'll help you sort through it and find the good stuff.

The Real Benefits of Cardio 76/84

When people think cardio what's the first thing that usually comes to mind? Weight loss. Second is probably something like running a 5K or just being miserable. When you tell someone you want to lose weights what's usually the first thing you're going to hear? "You have to do more cardio!" Like it's the only thing to do to make yourself leaner.

In reality (yes I'm going to keep saying this) any kind of cardio doesn't have a major effect on fat loss. Yes there is some, but it's not what people expect. This is the same throughout any type of cardio wether it's steady state, high intensity intervals, sprint intervals, or low intensity. They all have about the same effect on fat loss and it's nothing to write home about.

So if fat loss isn't the point then what is? Do you even need to do cardio at all? What are the other benefits? To start off with, yes you still need to do cardio. It still plays a big roll in overall health and needs to be added into any exercise program in some fashion. So what is it good for?

1. Cardiovascular strength

Obviously this in the name, cardio helps build cardiovascular strength i.e. how strong your heart and lungs are. In an older post about predictors on how long you will live, I mentioned VO2max as the #2 predictor of longevity. You need to do cardio to be able to build that. Usually, for increasing VO2max, sprinting and HIIT will do more than steady state (because you're much closer to your max).

2. Increased recovery

When you do cardio, you start to develop more capillaries, which are the very ends in your veins and arteries that connect to the muscles. When you have more capillaries, your body can get nutrient to your muscles more efficiently. When you can do that, you will recover from workouts and heal faster.

3. Increased athletic performance

If you're trying to play any kind of sport at all, having a good aerobic (cardiovascular)  base will help you play better and longer. Even if your sport is mostly anaerobic like volleyball, having a better base will help you recovery between plays and allow you to express your full anaerobic abilities for longer.

Obviously there are many more benefits, especially in the health field, but these are usually the ones I discuss most with clients. So just keep in mind, just doing more cardio or conditioning without making dietary changes will not help you lose weight but there are still good benefits of doing cardio. No matter your goal you should always keep it in your training program, at least a a minimum

Flexibility vs Mobility 70/84

Mobility is a topic that has come into the spotlight a ton in the last 5-6 years or so. I believe CrossFit has played a huge roll in that with the popularity of guys like Kelly Starrett and his Supple Leopard book. For hundreds of years before that, people had been talking about things like yoga and the benefits they can have on flexibility. This is obviously still hugely popular today and you can't walk into a gym without seeing someone on a mat stretching out before a workout (which is a terrible idea, don't do that). Things brings up the question in people's mind about what the difference between flexibility and mobility is. Are they same? Are they different? What is the difference if they are?

If you would have asked me 5 years ago I would have told you that flexibility refers to a muscle and mobility refers to a joint. You've never heard someone say "that's one mobile hamstring you've got there" but they would say "your ankles are very mobile". While I think this is still true I've heard another definition as well. Julien Pineau is the founder of Strongfit and one of the smartest people I've ever come across in this field. He defines mobility as "flexibility under tension" which I like more the more think about it. I can't tell you how often I take someone through an assessment who is super flexible but still can squat below parallel. They may do yoga all the time or stretch every day but that doesn't mean they can get into the right positions and use all of that flexibility when muscular tension is added.

This is not to say that flexibility is not important, you still need to be able to take a joint through a full range of motion (ROM) and proper stretching can help with this. But, what I like to do more often is to build people's flexibility while doing the exercises they need to be better at. RDLs (Romanian Deadlifts) are a great example of this. RDLs are what's called a "stretch position exercise" which is exactly what I sounds like and it takes the hamstring through a great stretch when you do it. This means it's a great tool for teaching flexibility under tension (mobility) in the hamstrings. Other examples of exercises like this are chest flyes, Incline curls, Jefferson Squats, Bulgarian Split Squats, and overhead Tricep extensions. Each on of these exercises takes the muscle through its largest range of motion and give you a chance to work on mobility.

So basically, instead of spending time in a forward bend to stretch the hamstring, we practice a perfect RDL to increase mobility. Or instead of a side split we do a Jefferson Squat to increase hip mobility. This allows us to increase the length a muscle is allowed to go while also getting us into better positions that will translate to exercise. If you want more examples of those or videos on how to do them, Julien has a great set of videos he calls "openers" that help you work on flexibility under tension in different muscle groups.

This also brings up a good point about how much range of motion you need to use in exercises. Often times exercise have a prescribed ROM  that you're expected to hit like squatting below parallel or touching your chest on a bench. But most exercises really don't have one, so what do you do? I tell people to take a exercise through the largest ROM they can while still keeping tension in the muscle. So say I'm doing a dumbbell bench press, sure I can bring weight down and touch my shoulder each time but what if I lose tension in my pec 4 inches before that? I say it's better to stop when you lose tension on that prime mover instead of going through a full ROM just to do it. You end up dumping tension into connective tissue, which can put you at risk, and you're probably not even getting extra benefit from it. Instead, work through the range you can under tension and try to increase that range as much as you can. If you can't keep pec tension on through the full ROM now, eventually you'll be able to and you'll get the full benefit from the lift. Obviously then, when you go do this, you know that you mobility in that area has increased.

Give this a try next time your at the gym and see what kind of ROM  you can get you body through while still maintaining that tension!

Drink Coffee, Live Longer 69/84

I'm going to keep this one short and sweet; coffee is amazingly healthy for you. Not only is the list of benefits long, but the benefits listed are really important ones that have a massive effect on your life. I'm going to keep this one in list form because everyone loves lists, but you can find more detail on each one of these points and each is actually backed by scientific research. Here's a list of some health benefits of drinking coffee

I'm going to keep this one short and sweet; coffee is amazingly healthy for you. Not only is the list of benefits long, but the benefits listed are really important ones that have a massive effect on your life. I'm going to keep this one in list form because everyone loves lists, but you can find more detail on each one of these points and each is actually backed by scientific research. Here's a list of some health benefits of drinking coffee

• Improved Energy Level (duh)
• Increase Motivation 
• Minor Burn Fat 
• Increased Performance 
• Lower Risk of Diabetes
• Protection from Alzheimer's and Dementia
• Lower the Risk of Parkinson's 
• Reduced Liver Disease 
• Decreased Depression
• Decreased Risk of Liver Cancer
• Decreased Risk of Colon Cancer
• Decreased Risk of Stroke
• Decreased Mortality 
• Super High in Antioxidants    

Pretty important list right? Seems like something I'd want to take advantage of cause living longer is sweet. As far as life expectancy, studies have shown around 18-26% long life span in coffee drinkers. That's rather significant. Most of the recommendations I've seen are somewhere around 4-6 cups of coffee per day. Keep in mind this is fluid cups, not 4-6 coffee mugs worth. The average mug is about 2 cups so you're looking at 2-3 mugs per day for these benefits. Also, this isn't about coffee loaded up with cream and sugar. Black is where it's at and you should give it a try. If you don't like black coffee then you don't actually like coffee. You can try it iced if you don't like it hot and often times cold brew tastes a bit sweeter.  One final point, I try to avoid caffeine after 3pm as often as possible even if you're someone who doesn't react a ton to caffeine you should consider this. Even if you fall asleep easily, it has been shown that the QUALITY of sleep can go down quite a bit. And that's arguably more important than quantity.

So go load up that coffee maker and get ready to smash some brew in the morning. I'm trying to take full advantage of that extra 26% of life.

Kicking Ass in the Real World: Why Barbells are Not That Functional 68/84

I'm going to be honest, CrossFit got this one wrong. Generally considered the king of functional training, CrossFit relies way too much on a training tool that barely relates daily life in the least. Very rarely are you going to find an object in nature that has been perfectly proportioned for you to lift it. No, usually it's going to be some weird, unbalanced shape that's going to need to crazy maneuver to pick up. For example, my in-laws live on a small pig farm and one day we were having trouble getting a young pig from the barn to and outdoor pen. I decided the easiest thing to do was for me to lift it into a wheelbarrow and wheel it over. They informed me that the pig weighed about 175 pounds, not much considering I've deadlifted well over 500 before. But you know what? That was damn near one of the heaviest things I've ever needed to lift. The pig was moving, the balance point was weird, I could not lift with a perfectly flat back, and I need to do some crazy one-arm-over-one-arm-under thing to lift it. Plus, something like that is way further from your body and center of gravity than a barbell is, making it feel much heavier. If you have ever done Strongman stone loading then you know exactly what I mean. The bottom line is that you need to focus on way more than barbell training if you really want to be functional.

While CrossFit and other functional training methods spend s lot of time with barbells, they obviously use other tools as well. Kettlebells, medicine balls, body weight, and sometimes Dumbbells (much more now than they used to) are all seen on a daily basis. And while these things are all great, they still may not accomplish the goal of helping with every day living. There are some other great tools that I love and I wish were used more often then you see.

The biggest one of these is sandbags, and I don't mean the ones with convenient handles. These can be a great tool for functional training. They're big, heavy, awkward, and their weight shifts as you lift. This makes them great for learning to move real world object. Lift them, squat then, press them, carry them, just move them in some way. Another great option is atlas stone or any odd shaped stones. Just find a big rock, pick it up, and carry it. This will do wonders for your leg, core, back, and arm strength as well. To be honest, anything you can pick up and carry can be functional to an extent. Yes, this includes barbells (think farmers carry) and pretty much anything else. When we're looking at exercises that are "functional" in terms of relating to every day lifeit's hard to beat pickup something up and carrying it.

The other problem with barbells is the fact that 90+% of exercises are done bilaterally, meaning with both arms or legs at the same time. While this allows you to move the most weight, it limits you in your options. If you want to be truly functional then single arm and single leg exercises are a must for your program. This can show you imbalances, potentials for injury, as well as helping a ton with balance and stability. If this sounds like most of your training, then try adding in some unilateral work and you might be surprised how much stronger one arm or leg is than the other.

The point is to make sure that your training stays carried and doesn't lock you into only a few pieces of equipment. The more variety you're going to do, the better and healthier you're going to be.

Go Join A Bar League Team 67/84

I've talking in the past about how important daily activity is and how it's really the most important exercise for losing fat. This can be anything from walking your dog to going for a bike ride. One other great way to get some weekly exercise is to go join a bar league or rec league sports team. It doesn't really matter what you want to do; volleyball, softball, basketball, soccer, just get out and play. One of the best parts about working out all the time is when you can actually use the fitness you build in the gym in the real world. Not only does it make all that gym time worth it, but if your workout program is any good then you will have a solid advantage over a ton of people you're playing against.

Outside of the fact that playing sports is just plain fun and it is obviously good exercise, it can also be a great stress reliever and help you get a mental break from the day to day norms. Just that hour or so a week can do wonders for clearing your head and preventing you from getting burnt out. Add that to the social aspect of meeting new people and making connections and you have some great benefits that aren't physical.

Another one of the great benefits is that being on a team gives you something to train for. Want to lose 10 pounds? Now you have that extra bit of motivation because you know you'll play better. When I got back into playing volleyball after a few years it was perfect timing for me. Since stopping CrossFit I wasn't really sure what goals I wanted to reach for, but playing again gave me something to work on and I was having fun in the gym again. I could focus on getting my vertical back up and healing up my knees to keep playing. It also forced me to drop some weight so I could be more athletic.

Here's a quick reference list of all of the benefits you can get from playing a sport

• Extra exercise
• Fat loss
• Increased cardiovascular strength
• Injury prevention
• Increased training motivation
• Decreased mental stress
• Meeting new people
• Winning free beer
• Showing off how awesome you are

Just about everyone played a sport a some time in their life, and if they didn't they probably have one that they love. You might as well get out and try it so you can reap the benefits as well. If you want a program to help you dominate the rec sports world then let me know. Programming for athletes is really a specialty of mine and I would love to get you some help. Shoot me a message or email and we'll get the ball rolling!

Tracking Food Without Tracking Macros 66/84

So bottom line of food tracking, tracking macros works. It just does, assuming you're doing it right and willing to weigh and measure all of your food for the rest of your life. If you want to lose weight tracking macros will help, if you want to gain weight tracking macros will help. I still start all of my new clients out by giving them a macro based plan because if they follow it they will make progress. The issue comes in when you have a client who just hates doing it. Sure, you could tell them to suck it up and just do it, but I think that makes you bad at your job. As a personal trainer, your job is to find a good nutrition and workout plan that your clients enjoy and will STICK TO. If they don't like it they won't do, that's the truth. It doesn't matter how amazing and perfect that plan you wrote is, if they don't like it it's not happening. If this is the case, I always have a backup plan.

So, you come across someone who hates logging all of their food into a phone app, what do they do? Are they doomed to be fat and unhealthy forever? Of course not, we just need to find a different way to track. Probably the simplest way is just to write your food in a notebook, not amounts or calories, just what you ate and when. This alone can be pretty eye opening for what people are actually eating. Another good way that I love is the "measuring" techniques taught by Precision Nutrition. These techniques involve using your hand as your only measuring tool for you food each meal. I would recommend Googling the pictures to get a visual but I'll obviously explain here (I don't want to post them because they're not mine).

Protein - Palm sized
Veggies - Fist sized
Carbs - Cupped hand
Fat - Thumb length

As a starting point, men should aim for 2 of each of those per meal and women should aim for 1 of each. Use this as a baseline then you can adjust as needed throughout a Bulk or a Cut. Just as with macros, I would suggest you start by increasing or decreasing fat as you go. All of the other procedures still apply such as make protein and veggies a priority, get your intraworkout shake and spread your food out evenly.

The whole point of this post is that there is more than one way to do just about everything in this field. The other point is that we need to be able to learn good habits so that we don't HAVE to relay on things like My Fitness Pal and Fit Bit to tell us what we're doing is right, we just know it. You need to be able to develop the skills needed to be healthy without the over complicated technology. Personally, I've dropped about 20 pounds in the past few months without tracking a single day in my phone. Was my Cut optimal? I don't know, but I've retrained plenty of lean body mass and my body fat is way down, so I'd call it a success.

The Health Benefits of Vitamin D 65/84

We hear often about the potential benefits of different vitamins and minerals. The vitamin industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that moves an incredible amount of product each year. In spite of this, to be honest, most of the products they're moving are absolute crap. Yes, there are definitely good multi-vitamins out there but they are hard to come by. You need to find a GMP certified company and do diligent research to find a good one. With that being said, Vitamin D is one supplement that almost everyone can agree is very beneficial. Actually, Vitamin D isn't even a vitamin, it's a pro-hormone because it can be synthesized in the body from sunlight on the skin. Actual vitamins can't be produced in the body and need to be taken in from food. Although sunlight can be a great source of Vitamin D, there are benefits to supplementing as well, which most people can benefit from. Here is a quick list of some of the benefits

• Live longer
• Lower risk of Multiple Sclerosis  
• Lower risk of fractures 
• Lower risk of muscle issues 
• Good for immune system
• Regulate insulin level
• Aid diabetes management
• Support lung function and cardiovascular health
• Improved strength and power output

These are all hugely amazing benefits that I think everyone can agree would be good for you. One of the best things, like I said, is that Vitamin D is one of the more agreed upon vitamins out there. The other thing people agree on is that there is a huge Vitamin D deficiency in the world. In the Northern Hemisphere, about 50% of the population is deficient, even people who think they get enough sunshine. So how do you know if you're Vitamin D deficient? Honestly, it can be really hard to tell. The easiest way is to get a blood test, which is something I recommend everyone do. Other than that, keep a lookout for decreases in athletic performance or energy. If you realize that your golf game kinda sucks a little worse now, you might be deficient. 

So you find out you are indeed deficient, what do you do? Obviously, try to get out in the sun, you only need about 10 minutes of sun (with no sunscreen) each day to help. You should also start supplementing as well. If you're vitamin level D is low, take 50,000 units once a week for 3 months to get your levels back up. After that, supplement with 2-4,000 units a day to keep levels high enough. Seems like kind of a lot but it's really not. And even so, there are no real reports of  Vitamin D toxicity. This means you can't really take too much unless you get to an extreme.

Personally, I take about 10,000 units a day right now which is just two tiny pills. I get mine from Xperience Fitness where we sell Supplement RX. 200 pills only cost $7.99 so there's definitely no excuse not to start.

How Everyday Products are Making You Sick and Fat 64/84

Today I've got a really good one for you guys. This information is all coming from a podcast that I listened to a couple months ago and I've finally had the time to take legit notes and write it up for you. This was from an episode of Renegade Radio with Jason Ferruggia and his guest was a man named Dr. Anthony G. Jay. Dr. Anthony G. Jay is a PhD Scientist who spends his time studying fats, hormones, and cholesterol. In this episode, he goes into detail about artificial estrogen and how it's making the world fat, sick, and infertile. He lists off the top 10 artificial estrogens to avoid and where to find them. He also recently wrote a book called "Estrogeneration" which is just ordered on Amazon. If, after reading this, you want to order it as well you can do so HERE

So to start off we need to talk about what estrogen actually is. Estrogen is the female sex hormone, it is responsible for the development of female sex hormones and reproduction. Obviously, estrogen is super important and is necessary for both men and women to function normally. The problem comes when the levels become way to high and start to cause major problems. Normal levels of estrogen for women range between 20-400 nanograms per liter (ng/L) depending on what time of the month it is. The problem that were seeing  is estrogen level up to nearly 2,000 ng/L, which are the levels we see in pregnant women and levels in men that are normally where women should be.

These increase are caused my estrogneic compounds which are compounds that act like estrogen in he body. These things cause estrogen levels to skyrocket and cause some huge problems. So what problems are associated with high estrogen levels

• Fat cell increase - Estrogen makes you put on fat, which makes sense when you look at it from the perspective of pregnancy. Fat has a ton of energy that mothers require to make sure their baby stays alive. It also makes you store fat in the way women typically do like in the hips or breasts
• Depression - Artificial estrogen is messing with natural estrogen levels can cause problem with depression and can decreases motivation 
• Allergies - When women get pregnant is suppresses their immune system so that their body doesn't kill the fetus. High level of estrogen from artificial sources can decrease the immune system and leave you open to illness and allergies 
• Infertility - Because estrogen is the female sex hormone it can cause some crazy problems in men. The biggest of these is infertility and other reproductive problems 
• Increased cancer risk - Breast cancer rates are up 250% since 1980 and have increase even more in different parts of the world. High estrogen levels are known to be one of the main causes of this.

So obviously this can all be some pretty terrible stuff, so what do you do about it? Here is Dr. AJ's list of Top 10 Estrogenic Compounds to avoid

1. phytoestrogens 
1. This compound is plant hormone that acts like estrogen in our body (just like this whole list)The biggest culprit of these compounds are soy and flax.
2. Micoestrogens 
1. This are also called zearalenone and they are a mold estrogen. In the U.S. we have these huge silos where were store grain. This grain starts to mold while it's in there, and it molds quite. The U.S. has no regulation or legal limit on how much mold can be found in our grains so other countries take advantage of that. When the UK gains have too much mold in their grain they ship it over here and we eat it. Isn't that great? As it turns out, non-organic grains are way worse because they are mass produced. Although you might think that organic would be worse, the large numbers result in lots of mold. Corn and wheat are equally bad when it comes to mold levels
3. Atrazine 
1. This is the second most used herbicide in the North America and it's totally illegal in European Union. CORN is by far the biggest problem for atrazine. The only real way to avoid it is to get organic corn. Studies have found 200ng/L causes reproductive abnormalities in frogs and cows that are fed with corn can have leves of atrazine of 700,000ng/L!
4. Triclosan/ alkylphenols
1. These two are soap estrogenics (found in our soaps) Triclosan will be listed on label but alkylphenolas will not. Make sure to keep a lookout for these two on your prodcuts. Because so many products have these compound in them, you can see what products Dr. AJ recommends on his website here  http://www.ajconsultingcompany.com/whatiuse.html
5. Oxybenzone/ benzophenone/ 4-methoxybenzophenone
1. These are the sunscreen estrogens and they are found in basically every big name sunscreen we use. Check the above list for good options or just look for organic sunscreen or one that have 20% zinc. By the way, BP is completely illegal in Europe.
6. Red 3 and Red 40
1. These two are obviously food coloring. Red 3 has been brought to FDA over 20 times to make it illegal but they keep getting shut down. These products require massive labels in Europe because they realize they may cause harm in children. A better option is to use beet juice instead.
7. Parabens 
1. These are perfumes estrogen and they are used as a preservative in the product. There are many different names and varieties "Methol- Propal- Benzol-" so keep a lookout for differnt ways they try to hide them. An interesting fact about parabens is that they move through blood and you pee them out. This results in public swimming pools have Paraben levels that are "concerning for children". They have also found high levels in Polar Bears because it is circulating in the water. 
8. Phthalates
1. This is a plastic additive that companies use to make it more rigid. Plastic #2,4,5 are the "best" ones for you to use by in reality you should try to avoid plastic when you can. Researchers have found up to 15% phthalates even in the better plastics listed above. Phthalates are actually far worse than BPA in this circumstance and products listed as "BPA Free" means they use phthalates instead.
9. BPA
1. This become popular years ago when people started to figure out how bad it was. It's not illegal nationally but the research is clear on how bad it is. There have been over 12,000 research papers starting how harmful it is. Even though it's not illegal nationally, 17 states made it illegal instead in some way or another. To combat that bad press BPA got, companies using BPS instead, which is basically the same thing.
10. Ethinyl estradiol (EE2)
1. This is the artificial estrogen that is found in birth control. Because of the high quantities our country takes birth control, it is found in pretty high qualities in the drinking water, especially in cities. Another big issue is that the human body doesn't break it down, because it is created that way. This means that it sticks around for a long time and creates a ton of problem.  

Ok I know, lots of super big chemistry words in there. I tried to make it as simple as I could but I also wanted to keep the actual names of the compounds in there. Now that you know the list we'll look at a couple of things you can do to stay away from these things. 

• Filter your water, especially in the city.
• Check labels if you're worried about this. Look for the crazy names listed above and check the list of good products I posted
• Buy things that are  fragrance free 
• Avoid plastic when you can, aim for stainless steel or glass instead.
• Avoid non-organic corn and wheat if you can. This also means grass fed beef is going to be a better option. 

I also recommend that you listen to the entire podcast yourself so you can hear the info straight from the source. You can always refer back to this list when you're done so that you have everything written out for you. You can find the podcast HERE. 

The 3 Best Predictors of How Long You Will Live 63/84

When we think about health and mortality everyone knows that exercise has it's place, but what we're starting to realize is exactly how important of a place that really is. If I where to ask you what one single factor was going to be the best predictor of mortality what would you say? Seriously, think about that for a second. Maybe family history? Stroke risk? Diabetes risk? They all seem like reasonable answers but they're not even close. Not even in the ballpark.

Most of this information was received by me from a couple of podcasts done on the Barbell Shrugged Podcast years ago. These podcasts featured a guy named Dr. Andy Galpin who, if you have been around with me for a while, you might recognize. Amongst other crazy knowledge bombs that Dr. Galpin always seems to drop, he mentioned the top three factors that predict mortality, and I'm sure they will be surprising to some of you. I'll discuss these top three in reverse order, starting with number three.

3. Lean Body Mass (LBM)

Lean body mass basically means anything in your body that's not fat. Muscle, skin, and bone are all included in this but for our purposes muscle will be the most important to us. For years people were under the assumption that muscle was just dumb tissue that did whatever the nervous system told it to do. Contract, relax, contract, relax over and over and that's it. What Dr. Galpin discusses is that muscle is actually super smart and regulates a
TON of hormone functions in the body. And the more muscle you have, the healthier you are (to an extent obviously). Combine this  with the fact that more muscle means more active and less injury prone in your later years and you can see why it's so high on the list. To increase LBM you simply have to hit the weights and get your muscles bigger so they work well. Stick in the 8-12 range most of the time for some good muscle building.

2. VO2max

Your VO2max is the maximum amount of oxygen that your body can take in at one time. The higher the VO2max, the healthier your respiratory and cardiovascular systems are and apparently the longer you're going to live. Obviously, if you can keep your heart and lungs strong for a long time, you'll be more active and less prone heart disease. To increase VO2max you need to do a combination on low, moderate, and high intensity cardiovascular training like spring intervals and walking.

1. Leg Strength

Yep, it's true, how strong your legs are is the single best determinant of how long you're going to live. In fact, it was a better predictor than wether or not you've ALREADY had a heart attack! Crazy right? I've heard Dr. Galpin discus that grip strength can be added along with this and I think it's safe to say that strength in general can be included. I assume leg strength was just the strength metric that they tested which came out the highest. This crazy fact could be the result of a few things, but in my professional opinion it can be linked best to 2. First, having stronger legs when you're older most likely means that you had been relatively active throughout your life, meaning you're probably healthier. This is definitely going to lead to a longer life.  Second, stronger legs means reduced chance of falling or getting hurt as well as increase activity, mobility, and independence when you get older. Basically, you can do more stuff on your own for longer and do it better. Sounds pretty great to me. To increase leg strength or strength in general you have to lift. Not only that but you have to lift pretty heavy stuff. The best strength gains come from around 3 reps to around 6 reps with at least 90 seconds rest in between.

So there you have it; lean body mass, VO2max, and leg strength are the three best predictors of his long hours going to live. Now, obviously if you excel in all of these it doesn't guarantee that you're going to love a long life, but it does put the odds in your favor

Working Around Injuries 62/84

So picture this; you're out at the lake on the weekend, enjoying the outdoor activities when you crash off of your jetski and sprain your wrist. It doesn't hurt too bad but I kind of ruins your weekend. You get to the gym on Monday and realize that the injury is way worse than you thought and you can barely use that hand at all. You've been putting in great time at the gym and you don't want to lose everything you've been working on. So what do you do? Take a break? Work around it? Work through it? Let's talk about it.

Depending on the severity of the injury, there's almost always a way for you to continue hitting the gym and making gains without having to lay on the couch and get fat. Pretty much any extremity injury can be worked around, that is most any injury to an arm or a leg. If that's what you're dealing with then, to be frank, it's not an excuse to skip the gym. You may not be able to do some of your favorite exercises but you can still work on other things. The basic rule for this is "if it hurts, don't do it". Avoid things that hurt and do pretty much anything that doesn't. We'll take my recent hamstring injury as an example. A couple Tuesday's ago a had a pretty minor high hamstring pull while playing sand volleyball. I finished the match but knew that it was going to be a bit sore. I also knew that a lot of my normal leg day activities would have to be put on hold. Did I use this as an excuse to skip the gym? Hell no! I just did what I could. I already do two upper body days so those stayed almost exactly the same, then when leg day came I just did things that didn't hurt. The only real pain I got was from hip hinge exercises like deadlifts and RDL's. This left light squatting, and things for my calves, adductors, and abductors, as well as isolation exercises like leg extensions. Was it ideal? No. Is it better than nothing? Of course. Moral is, don't use an extremity injury as an excuse to be lazy.

Now, obviously, there are some exceptions. Back injuries are nothing to mess with. Neither are neck injuries. If it hurts to move, probably don't go exercise. Just follow the same rule "if it hurts, don't do it". In these cases, do whatever you need to do to get well as fast as you can so you can get back to being healthy and getting exercise. Don't do anything stupid to make things worse.

On the topic of injuries, I am not a fan of ice. This is a completely different conversation but I just want to get this out there. Kelly Starett has a couple great videos that can probably explain this a bit better then I can but the basics are that our bodies have developed, over thousands of years, a way to heal ourselves and we're silly to think we can make much of a difference. Also, ice may actually increase the amount time to takes to heal from an injury due to backflow of some of the "garbage" you're body is trying to remove.

Along the same lines, I am a fan of ice baths and, obviously, chryotherapy but that is a much different story than simply putting an ice bag on a sprained ankle in a futile attempt to heal.

Everything here comes down to this; unless your injury prevents you from moving without a ton of pain, you should still be doing whatever you can, without pain, to continue making progress in the gym and keeping your health up as high as you can.

The Most Important Exercise for Fat Loss 61/84

You've probably seen me post before about how exercise really doesn't play a huge part in fat loss. Actually, it plays almost no part at all. This is due to a variety of factors including the fact that your body may actually slow your metabolism down after exercise to make up for the calories you burn.

Does this mean you should stop working out? Of course not! Exercise has innumerable benefits for your health and longevity that makes it an extremely important part of your life. But from the perspective of fat loss, what you do for an hour in the gym every day doesn't make much of a difference. In reality, what you do the other 23 hours of the day make much more of an impact on your waistline.

From an exercise perspective, daily activity makes a world of difference more for fat loss that other exercise. Basically, it you workout hard for an hour then sit in a chair or lay on your coach the rest of the day, you're never going to be as fit as you can be. Obviously, nutrition is still the most important factor for weight loss, but being active as often as you can will help.

This is one (of many) reasons why desk jobs or so bad for people's health. Things like standing work stations can help with this, but even standing for hours on end is still being sedentary. The best option for people in an office setting would be to move around as much as you are allowed. Sometimes sit, sometimes stand, and get up and walk around as often as you can. When you have a break, try to be active and go for a walk instead of finding somewhere else to sit.

Also, get ahead of the game by being active before and after work as much as possible. Walk often, play sports, and move often in your house. The more you can move around the better.

As weird as it may seem to say, the arbitrary goal of getting 10,000 steps in a day isn't really that bad of an idea. The number doesn't have any real reason behind it but it can still be something to strive for. I've worked with people who only get half of that each day and for those people, making better every day lifestyle choices is just, if not more, important that exercise choices.

Moral of the story, move around as much as you can and try to be sitting and standing still as little as possible. Combine this with good nutritional choices and a well structured workout plan and you'll live a long and healthy life

The Top 4 Benefits of Cryotherapy 54/84

My first cryotherpay session was actually years ago in Indianapolis, Indiana at Cryotherapy Indy with my friend Skyler. I was a pretty competitive CrossFit athlete at the time and was working hard towards my goal of snatching 300 pounds. We had used it that day as a means of recovery to get a good satch session in later. When we were done I felt great, the swelling in my hip had gone completely and my legs felt fresher than they had in a long time. Although I didn't hit my snatch goal that day, it did open my eyes to the benefits Cryo can provide.

I just did my second session ever a couple hours ago at Fox Valley Cryotherapy in Appleton, Wisconsin which is conveniently located almost literally right next door to Xperience Fitness where I work. For the past few months I have been dealing with a string of small but annoying volleyball related injuries from my knee, to my shoulder, to my back, my foot, and recently my hamstring. It seems like as soon  as one gets better something new just shows up. I've been going over different recovery options in my head and Cryo seems to be one that I always forget about. I decided to give it a consistent try and see how my body fares after a few go's. I'll get back to you guys with the results in a couple of weeks.

Cryoherapy is basically the process of getting in a chamber (called a Cryosauna) and using liquid nitrogen to cool the body's skin temperature down to 30 to 50 degrees F while cooling the chamber down to -100 to -274 degrees F. Basically it makes the chamber really damn cold and you get cold because of it. I know those temperatures sound extreme but I've found it to be much, much more enjoyable than an icebath, which is did often through high school and college. Although and ice bath temperature is much lower, it feels 100x colder than Cryo does.

This whole thing sounds totally crazy right? There has to be some pretty gnarly benefits to subject yourself to it on the regular. Well it turns out there are, and it can be some pretty good stuff. Here are some potential benefits that my readers can relate to.

- Decreased inflammation and healing time

Because Cryo is so cold, your bodies thermorecpetors freak and and start shuttling all of your blood to your internal organs to keep them warm. This removes any blood or fluid that has been building up  in muscles or joints (inflammation). Once there, the blood cells get loaded up with oxygen and nutrients that your body loves. When you start to warm back up, your body reopens your blood vessels and allows that new blood to come in, bringing the oxygen and nutrients with it. This will decrease the amount of time it can take to recover from injury and your joints can feel a ton better.

- Temporary metabolism increase

In my college anatomy class, we learned that shivering actually burns more calories per minute than any other activity, which makes a lot of sense here. When you do Cryo your skin and core temperature get super low. This means that your body is going to need to use a bunch of energy to heat itself back up over a decently long period of time. This has been reported to results in the burning of around 500-800 calories per session with an even longer after burn to reheat.

NOTE: Please don't be dumb and rely on cryotherpay to lose fat. Although it can have a small effect, there are still no shortcuts and you have to put the work in.

Decreased chronic pain

Cryo has been shown to have benefits for people with chronic pain and fibromyalgia for up to a few hours per treatment. This could lead to a longer benefit over long term use but there has been no research to support this yet. This is a result of the same reasons from point 1.

Like I said, I'll get back to you guys in  a few weeks once a get more sessions under my belt but I have high hopes for how this is going to help. I would definitely recommend this to you guys assuming you're not on the relatively long list of contraindications which you should check out first.

Why I Quit CrossFit 50/84

50 days in! Holy crap I can't believe I've managed to do this for this long. A lot of great stuff has happened since this started and I'm super excited to see where it will do from here! Anyway, for those of you reading who have known me for years know that I spend about 3 years training, competing, and coaching CrossFit. I did it basically every day without fail and got to the point where I was actually pretty competitive. But now it's been about a year since I've done a WOD and I wanted to write a post about why I made the switch,

I want to start off by saying that I still love CrossFit and even though I don't do it anymore I still have the utmost respect for it. I still closely follow what's going on and some of my best friends still compete, and we talk every day. Also, I use very CrossFitty workouts for most of my weight loss clients and it still works great for them. Although I've adjusted a few things that I feel are normally missing, I run those sessions very similarly to a CrossFit class.

I competed in and coached CrossFit from the time a finished undergrad and volleyball in 2013 until just after the 2016 CrossFit Open. During that time I gained about 30 pounds of solid muscle, added 100+ pounds to my deadlift and snachted 300 pounds, something that only a handful of people in the world will ever do, as well as a ton of other things someone my size has no business doing. I loved CrossFit and my life was all about it. I coached through my 2 years of grad school at The Arsenal (Muncie CrossFit) which is where I learned a ton about about exercise, coaching, mobility, SMR, and how to break the "rules" that exercise science tells us that are necessary for people. Once I moved up to Appleton, Wisconsin, I began helping out and coaching occasionally at CrossFit Appleton. I continued competing for a few months up there until I backed off to compete in a Weightlifting competition. After I won my weigh class for that, I hopped right back in to compete in the 2016 Open. I only trained for about 4 weeks or so but got back to a pretty competitive level. This is about the same time I start working as a trainer again too.

After the Open is over, every year I would take a little while to back off and work on some nagging injuries or imbalances that accumulate during the intensity of training competitively. It just so happened that this year I was working at Xperience Fitness where I had the option to work on powerlifting and bodybuilding outside of a CrossFit gym. This gave me access to different equipment that I didn't really train with for a couple years including dumbbells, machines, and the ability to do curls without judgement. As I began to back off on my programming to recover a bit, I also realized that working out at work was not only convenient but good for business as well. As a personal trainer there, it helped me get to know more members and make more connections that led to more clients. More clients is always better.

This also gave me a chance to reflect and figure out what my real goals were. Honestly, I knew for a long time that my height and size was going to limit me from every getting to where I wanted to go in CrossFit. CrossFit is definitely not a tall man's game and obviously I couldn't get shorter. I also was not willing to lose the weight that I would have needed to to be at a high level in bodyweight and gymnastics movements. I knew that I had to look and think about what I really wanted to work on.

After bouncing between programs and goals and not really knowing what I wanted, I got an opportunity that I hadn't really thought about in years; I started playing volleyball again. Finally! I had something to train for. I focused my program on the goals or getting strong, getting bigger, and being able to play again (basically getting my vertical up again). This worked out well with the program I wrote which already involved a lot of speed work anyway.

During this time I also learned a lot and realized a lot of things that were missing from typical CrossFit programming. There were multiple movement patterns, muscle groups and equipment that could help prevent injury and increase gains for people who are still doing it. The biggest things that I found missing where; horizontal pulling and pushing exercises, anything with a supinated grip, enough single arm/leg exercises, knee flexion, dumbbells, and any rotation or side-to-side movements. Lacking these things can have a pretty big impact on the health and longevity of competitors and adding in just a couple exercises for each can make a huge difference. Missing these elements leads to a lot off underdeveloped lats, pecs, biceps, and glutes (yeah I said it), hamstrings, and obliques. I think going into the details of all of these things would be an entire post in itself which I might need to do. For now, just know that CrossFit coaches really need to expand the movements they are using if they really want to do the most for their members as they can. What I do like recently is the use of the term "functional bodybuilding" (which I have been using for years) and seeing that grow into something that is more popular in the sports. From what I've seen, it address a lot of the issues I mentioned above.

So all in all, the biggest reason I took a step back is because it just didn't fit with my goals anymore. I knew that my success in CrossFit was most likely limited and I needed to figure out what I really wanted to do. Although I still love it and use it with my weight loss clients, CrossFit just no longer fit with the goals that I wanted. But even so, coaching for all of those years led me to where I am today and I would not be the trainer I am without it.

Running a Successful Cutting Phase Part 2 49/84

Hopefully you enjoyed yesterday's post on how to adjust your nutrition when you're trying to cut some weight. I want to reiterate  that that will be much more important to success than changing your workouts and what you do for your workout probably won't make as much if a difference as you thought. Although there are a few things you can do to help speed the process up a bit.

One of the most important things to think about when cutting is that we really need to focus on maintaining muscle mass. Although people often say "lose weight" what they really should mean is "lose fat". The goals shouldn't just be the number on the scale but to have your body fat percentage go down. If you don't do this right and end up losing muscle, you will weigh less but you'll still look soft and just be a smaller version of your previous self. In reality, THIS should be the main focus on your resistance training workouts. Still being strong, still lifting heavy even though you're eating less. Yes, you can and often should, include include fat loss circuits or conditioning but maintaining muscle should be priority #1. Here's a few tips to help with that

- Try full body workouts. Using your whole body each workout can help burn more calories and allows you to utilize killer exercises like Burpees and thrusters. Try 3-4 full body workouts per week
- Still use compound movements. They burn the most calories because they use the most muscles. They will also do the best job of maintaining muscle mass.

- Lift heavy and often. Just because you're cutting that doesn't mean you can get weak. Again, the main goal is muscle mass and you should try to keep as much strength as possible too.

- Shorten rest periods. This is an easy way to increase the intensity of your workout. Stick to 30-45 seconds for smaller movements and go as high as 60 seconds for bigger lifts.

- Turn your accessory work into a circuit. You can take the last point one step further and eliminate some rest periods all together. Take your last 4 accessory exercises and do then back to back with no rest the break about 45 seconds between rounds. This will also help you get out of the gym faster.

- Higher reps don't mean "toning" but can help increase intensity. You don't need to do high reps but they do a decent job of getting your heart rate up. Then again, so does lifting really heavy.

- Avoid long, slow cardio. People still seem to believe that this is super important in weight loss. Going for that long run may be doing more harm than good for your fat loss efforts.  Replace it with something higher intensity and save yourself some time.

- Do HIIT or SIT to save time. See above point. Although, when equalized for total calories, High Intensity Interval Training, Sprint Interval Training, and traditional cardio all burn about the same amount of fat, HIIT and SIT take significantly less for a similar result. They also help maintain more muscle.

- Go for a walk. This is an often underrated form of exercises. Although it somewhat contradicts my HIIT recommendation, walking can burn easy calories while still maintaining muscle better than traditional cardio.

- Get 10,000 steps every day. This should be a minimum for everyone. Daily activity is the most important exercise factor in weight loss. Sure, you could get a great 45 minute workout in but it won't make a difference if your sitting on your butt the other 23 hours and 15 minutes.

So one more time, you don't need to make massive changes in workout from a bulking phase or maintenance phase to a cutting phase but there are a few things you can do. If you take the above points and combine then with the nutrition information from yesterday the  you'll be better off saving your muscle and making sure of those pounds lost are fat!

Running a Successful Cutting Phase Part 1 48/84

Now that I've finished with the post on how to bulk, it's time to get after what it takes to cut successfully.  I think this one will definitely speak to more people than the bulking posts especially since the majority of people want to lose fat. Just like I did earlier, I'll start with nutrition first and then go on into the workouts tomorrow.

I've posted this time after time and I'm going to keep posting it forever because it's really important; nutrition is the single most important factor in weight loss. If you try to eat like crap and just change up your workouts or add some more cardio then you're going to fail. You need to make changes in what you eat each day if you ever actually want to make progress. Here are the biggest things I coach people through

- Just like when bulking, you need to find a baseline first but then eat a little less. You can do this by tracking calories or just base it off of what your body has been doing recently. If your weight have stayed the same then just eat a little less, if you've been gaining weight slowely then you need to eat a lot less

- Still hit 1 gram of protein per pound or body weight. As weird as it might sound, it might actually be MORE important to eat protein when cutting because you want to preserve muscle mass on a calorie deficit.

- Prioritize protein and veggies each meal. Try and get 1-2 palm sized servings on protein and 1-2 fist size servings of veggies per meal and eat them first.

- Pick either low carb or low fat but don't try and do both at the same time. You have to reduce calories some how and it shouldn't be from protein.

- Reduce calories slightly and stay there until weight loss stops, then reduce again until you plateau again. This is how my nutrition programs are set up for you.

- Try super low carb if you need to, but only for a short time. This can work well for a big time hormonal reset and help get some insulin sensitivity back, similarly to intermittent fasting.

- Base carbs off of workout volume for the day. If your workout has more volume than eat more carbs. Less volume equals less carbs, and non workout days should be low carb.

- Aim to lose 1-2 pounds per week. .5 isn't bad either but you don't want to lose any more than that consistently.

- Only cut for 3 months at a time then maintain. I wrote a whole post on this so I don't need to go into detail.

- Maintain for as long as you cut then cut again if needed.

- Have protein or BCAAs during workout and protein before bed. I prefer protein over BCAAs but if you're super calorie restricted the they can be ok to help maintain muscle.

- Try intermittent fasting. Again, whole post on this. Actually 3, so not a lot of detail here.

All in all it comes down to finding what works for you and sticking too it. Consistency is going to be the most important and without it the details don't matter. As long as you are consistently eating less calories than you're burning, being active, and taking maintenance lanes then you will be successful!

Running a Successful Bulking Phase Part 2 47/84

Now that you guys know how to eat to grow effectively, you'll need to know how to lift to grow too. To be 100% honest there doesn't NEED to be a huge difference between the workouts to get bigger or smaller if your diet is on point. Look at bodybuilders, there's not much of a difference between their bulking workouts and cutting workouts but they still manage to change a ton. With that being said, there are still some things you can do to help the process along and make it as effective as possible.

- Focus on strength first. If you worry about getting stronger then bigger muscles will come. This is, of course, if your workouts are programmed right.

- Get strong with compound movements. No one cares how much you can curl, like, no one. You shouldn't try to go heavy on an exercise like a bicep curl but you should go heavier and exercises like squats, deadlifts, presses, and pulls that use a lot of muscles. This is the best way to get strong and add quality muscle to your body.

- For these compound movements, keep your reps around 3-8. You can go higher or lower if you like but this is a great range to spend most of your time in.

- Do accessory work second. Once you finish your main lifts then you can move on to your accessory and isolation exercises. These can include exercises for your upper back, chest, glutes, and hamstrings then finish with things like biceps, triceps, neck, and calves.

- For these you'll want to go lower weight than with the compound movements and stick with 8-15+ reps for most. Things like calves, abs, and neck can go even higher as well

- Don't get confused, higher reps do not mean toning and they won't just help with muscular endurance. Not only can they still help build muscle but they're actually important in the process.

I have talked about this in the past but there are a number of ways you can split up your days and still make great progress. I have ones that I prefer and program often but I list a few options for you.

- Full body workouts. Hit the whole body 3 times a week and you're good.

- Upper/ lower. I did this a ton while I did my last bulk. I did 2 upper body and two lower body workouts a week. Sometimes I even added a third upper day just to work on some weak points.

- Push/pull/lower. This is what I'm doing now. I do deadlifts and pulling Monday, pressing Wednesday , and legs Friday. Just like above, sometimes I add a pump day on Saturdays.

- Bodybuilding splits. I'm not a huge fan of these for most people but they still can work. A basic example would be to separate chest/triceps, back/biceps, shoulders, arms, and legs. Abs can be sprinkled in there as well.

Once you decide what kind of split you want then use these guidelines to build your workouts.

Do 1-3  compound exercises
Do 2-5 isolation exercises
And do 1-2 exercises per muscle group

You really don't need a ton more than that once you add in the rep schemes from above. Usually 2-5 sets per exercise is plenty. One thing I often see sf people doing way more volume per muscle group than they need to. You don't need 5 exercises for chest and another 6 for triceps to grow and more is not better.

Hopefully these guidelines can help you build a good workout and let you run a successful bulk. If you cutting then save this for the winter and also stay tuned until tomorrow when I get into the details on how to cut successfully. Finally, I'm still accepting a couple more people for my workout test group. If you're interested in working with me for free for a month then subscribe via the pop-up and you'll get added right in

See you tomorrow

Running A Successful Bulking Phase Part 1 46/84

I'm not going to lie, bulking is way more fun than cutting. I don't think this would be news to anyone, especially because of the look on their face when I tell my weight loss clients that I'm trying to gain weight. With that being said, it's not the free-for-all that people think it is, and so many people do it way wrong. Bulking is not about eating all the food and getting as big as possible as fast as possible. That mentality is a really good way to get fat. Bulking is about gaining quality muscle mass while maintaining as much of the leanness you worked so hard for on your cut. The process should be slow, just like weight loss, and it needs to be just as well planned. In this post, I'll go over the nutrition points you need to focus on when bulking and in Part 2 I'll go over the workouts.

During a bulk, your goal should be to gain about 1 pound per week for men and closer to .5 for women. Any more than that and you are probably not gaining quite as much lean muscle as you can. Obviously, you're going to get a little bit of body fat while you're bulking but the goal is to try and keep it to a minimum while still gaining a good amount of muscle. There are a few main points that you should spend most of your time focusing on. I'll go through those as bullet points to make it easy.

Nutrition

Whether you're bulking or cutting, nutrition is going to be super important to making sure you actually make progress. Here are some basic recommendations that I live by when bulking

- Find your baseline then eat a little more. If your weight is stable right now then all you need to do is add a little more food and you'll start gaining weight. If you want to get more precise there are some macronutrient recommendations you can use.

- Aim for .8-1.0 grams of protein per pound that you weigh. Most people don't get enough protein each day and this might be all the extra calories you need to hit point 1. This mean a guy weighing 180 pound would need between 145 and 180 grams per day.

- Aim for .5-2.0 grams of carbs per pound that you weigh. Yes, I know this is a broad range but it depends on the volume and intensity of your workout for the day. On days you do workouts that are higher volume, you should eat more carbs and days you do less you should eat less cars. most workout days will be closer to .8-1.5 grams per pound. Conditioning days will be on the lower end, even if the "feel harder".

- Fill in the rest of your calories with healthy fats. If you are tracking calories and macros this will just make up the remainder if you daily calories.

- As you progress through your bulk, carbs and protein stay about the same but fat increases. There is a number of reasons for this; protein and carbs have optimal ranges that they should be consumed in but fat doesn't, and fat has the most calories per gram meaning you need to eat less to get more. Want to make this simple? Add a scoop of peanut butter to the end of each meal.

- Still focus on getting protein and veggies with each meal and spread you carbs and fats pretty evenly across your day. Make sure you still eat about 1 cup of veggies per meal, you're going to want the fiber with all the food you'll be eating.

- Make sure you're getting you intra-workout shake each workout. Not only will this help you get more calories in each day but it'll help prevent any potential muscle loss from workouts

- Get protein and fat right before bed. This will help you recover faster and prevent muscle loss when sleeping, I like to blend 2 scoops on whey with peanut butter but if you can get casein protein that will be much better.

- Once you stop gaining weight, increase fat by a couple servings a day and maintain that until you stop gaining again.

- Just like cutting, you'll need to take a maintenance phase about every 3 months to get your body used to your new weight. If you don't you'll quickly lose the weight you worked so hard to put on.

If you can get good at these things and combine them with the workout blueprint I'll be posting tomorrow then you're definitely going to have a successful bulk. Remember to take is slow and enjoy the process, don't just try to rush to the end. Finally, if you want to see what it's like to work with me for totally free then subscribe here and you can join the group of workout testers that I'll be starting with this Monday. You can read about the workout HERE and see the post I but up about it on Facebook HERE. Anyone is free to join so let me know!

See you tomorrow!

Facebook: Greg Herceg - Personal Trainer
Instagram: @Greg.the.Trainer
Email: gsherceg@gmail.com

Injury Free Training 44/84

Let's be honest here. Most people's goals should be long term. Unless you're competing in a sport, part of your goals should include building healthy habits and a sustainable lifestyle. Usually this means the goal is to not get hurt, and make consistent progress over years. Getting injured can put a huge damper on any progress and make a lot of people give up entirely. Even though there's usually way more you can do when hurt than people think, it's always just better to not get hurt in the first place. Here a few tips you can take and use to help make sure that you're preventing injury while still making gains.

-Work in your mobility/ flexibility

Although being more flexible doesn't automatically make you less likely to get injured, it's still important to be flexible enough and mobile enough to be able to get in the proper positions for exercises. Take the deadlift as an example. Although an extremely important and effective exercise, if your hamstrings don't allow you to get your back flat when the bar is on the floor then it becomes rather dangerous and not worth it. I'm situations like this, decrease the range of motion to a point where you can do the exercise perfectly.

-Barbells are not all that functional

Should you train with barbells? Probably. Do you have to? Not necessarily. Are they really all that functional? Not really. During every day life you're more than likely not going to be lifting a perfectly balanced bar with a grip width that fits your hand perfectly. Although I do include them in all of my programs, you need to train with other implements such as dumbbells, kettlebells, sand bags, medicine balls, and bodyweight exercises. Getting a good mix of all of those and making sure you're moving them properly is going to help ensure longevity.

-Use single arm/leg for muscular imbalances

Have you ever watched someone do a back squat and it just looks like absolutely crooked garbage? I have, and that's part of the reason most of my clients don't do barbell back squats until a while into our programs. When I do have a person like this, I often take them away from two leg squats for a while all together and work on single leg squats, step ups, and lunges. Things like this can help identify  and fix imbalances that can cause issues. If you just try to power through bad technique you could end up hurting yourself.

-Don't train to failure

Training to failure is a great way to burn yourself out and kill progress. You should be pushing yourself but alway leave 1-2 reps in the tank. Not only can this help you stay in the game longer, but there's not even any real research to prove training to failure results in more muscle gain.

-Don't get overhyped

Again, a great way to fry yourself out and kill progress. Things that fall into this include tons of preworkout, smelling salts, getting slapped up, and yelling/ grunting through reps. If you're going for a big deadlift PR then these things can help you smash weights, but they are definitely not things you should do every day or even every week.

-Don't to hard every day

This is kind of a culmination of the last two. You don't need to go hard and give 100% every single time you go to the gym. Killing yourself on every metcon, hitting rep PRs on every lift, and crushing yourself every day is going to lead to over training, burn out, and potentially injury. Work hard and try and do a little more every week but don't kill yourself. You'll be better off for it in the long run.

Training Every Day for Gains 41/84

This is an interesting topic that hasn't come into the spotlight until recently. If you have been following along with me for a bit, you'll see that I have posted in the past about how I think some people train way too often and that they think that more is better. I've posted about how training too much can actually hurt progress in the long run and that training less frequently may be a better option. I've even cut my own training down to only 3 or 3.5 days of lifting per week. Although I feel that this has been working really well for me recently, this entire conversation all comes back to the "do what works best for you" principle that I preach more often than anything. This is where training every single day can actually be pretty beneficial for a lot of people. In this post, I want to get into how to train every day, what the benefits can be, and who could really benefit from this. Then, tomorrow, at the half way point of my promised 84 straight days of posting, I'm going to write up a free workout, based on this plan, that you guys will have access to.

So why the change of heart? After talking so much about training less, why am I now saying that it might be better for some people to train even more? Like I said in the intro, you need to find what's going to work best for you and hammer that. I'm not necessarily changing my opinion, just giving you more options. If it is better for you and your schedule to make it a habit of getting to the gym every day, at the same time, and running through a quick workout, then do that! The first time I was ever exposed to a workout like this was from a book called "Easy Strength" co-authored by Dan John and Pavel about 5 years ago. This workout was essentially doing the same 5 exercises every single day with next to no volume and almost no weight. Then slowly, almost immeasurably, increasing the volume each week until the point where you're way stronger than you were at the beginning. It's a super weird concept but apparently it works, especially since those two are two of the more established strength coaches in the world. More recently, one of my favorite coaches, Jason Ferruggia, discussed in a podcast about how he tried this for 3 months with great success. That's really were I got the idea to do this because I started thinking about the clients that I already work with that could benefit from it.


The biggest argument for training less often is that less volume is going to allow you to make sure that you're recovering super well from each workout. So what if you can take a 3 day a week workout, cut each day in half, and make it a 6 day a week workout? What if you take the exact same volume you did in 3 days and just do it over 6 days? Yes, your workouts would be shorter, probably around half the time, but that's really the point. And that's exactly what I plan to do. I started out with a workout that I would normally program for 3 days a week and I cut it in half so that each workout could be done in a short time each day. The total amount of work you do each day will be low, probably way lower than any of you are used to. But if you feel like this is something that can be beneficial for you then I encourage you to try it.

The biggest benefit of a workout like this the ability to build a habit around exercise. If you get used to going to the gym at the same time every day and just make it part of your daily routine, then it will be easier to make it a habit and make going to the gym something that you actually do. Although you're not doing that much each day, during the week you're still getting the same total volume that you would be getting if you were doing 3 longer workouts during the week. This mean that, not only will you not miss out on any strength gains, but you actually may get stronger because of it. And since the volume is so low each day, you don't need to worry about being able to recover from day today. Sure, the first week you may be a little sore, but you'll adjust and be able to make a good habit of it. In the long term, since you'll be able to make it to the gym so regularly, you may actually start to see some progress that you've been missing out on for years.

There are a few different types of people that this can be beneficial for so hopefully you can fit into one of these. A high frequency workout like this is great for people who have a hard time with sticking with the gym. Especially if they are also a person who loves to run their lives off of a routine. Having the same work hours each day and working off of the same schedule each day is going to be the perfect placement to add in a quick 20-30 minute workout each day. Get in, get out, get it done, and go back to work (or go eat). Something like a lunch break is a great place to add a quick workout like this. You can also add it in super quick before or after you go to work. On the other hand, if you're someone who has a different day to day schedule, or doesn't have trouble getting to the gym, you may not need to worry about a workout like this. Although it still can be beneficial if you want to try it.

So I'm going to cut it short there because I'll explain the rest tomorrow when I post the workout. But here's the trick, the only people who will receive the workout of my subscribers. So if you're already subscribed to this blog then great! You'll get a fresh new workout in your email tomorrow. But if you're not yet subscribed then make sure to do that! You can do it via the pop-up window on here. Also, when you subscribe, you'll get a copy of the nutrition plan I use with my clients as well as a couple sweet infographics about my favorite muscle building and fat loss tips (seriously they're super cool). So don't wait! Subscribe now and get a bunch of free stuff, plus a new workout tomorrow and more free stuff in the future.

See you tomorrow!

Facebook: Greg Herceg - Personal Trainer
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