By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS

How much would your life improve if you could literally put your behaviors on “auto-pilot� and eliminate the need for “teeth-gnashing,� “gut-it out� willpower?

What would it mean to you if you could automatically just eat the right foods and automatically carry out your workouts every day, without straining… without even having to think about it?

How would your body and your health change if you just automatically did the right thing everyday… as effortlessly as you shower, brush your teeth or get dressed?

Would you agree that the most challenging part of losing weight and getting in shape is taking the right actions every day? (Not “talking�… but “DOING�?)

It’s easy to say, “Eat smaller, more frequent meals.�
It’s easy to say, “Eat natural foods, avoid refined food and sugar.�
It’s easy to say, “Eat ample amounts of healthy, essential fats�
It’s easy to say, “Eat a lean protein with each of your meals�
It’s easy to say, “Get at least 30 minutes of physical activity every day�
Yes, easy to say… easy to talk about… not always so easy to do.

Why is it such a challenge to DO the things that you know you must do every day to get results? Why do we say one thing, and then do another?

The answer lies in your subconscious mind and in the awesome force known as HABIT, which has enormous power to pull you in a certain direction… positive or negative.

Your subconscious manages and carries out autonomic functions of your body, including digestion, circulation and respiration, so you don’t have to think about them. If you’ve ever studied human anatomy and physiology, then you can appreciate the importance of this. The complexity and number of human bodily functions is staggering.

Can you imagine if you had to consciously think about or “will� your body to digest food, release hormones, beat your heart, circulate blood and all the other countless functions that are going on in your body at the same time?

It would be impossible. And that’s where your subconscious mind comes in. It handles all this stuff for you on an un-conscious level so you don’t have to be overwhelmed.

In the same way, your subconscious handles many ordinary behaviors every day so you don’t have to be overwhelmed.

A habit is simply an automatic behavior. The behavior has become automatic because it has been repeated frequently and thereby, turned over to subconscious control.

A habit, then, could be described as a behavior pattern fixed in your subconscious mind as a result of repetition.

Habits are a result of behaviors repeated… but they begin with a single act.

Orison Swett Marden, founder of Success magazine, once wrote,

“The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably.�

I often advise my clients to become very aware of the behaviors they repeat on a regular basis and never to do things daily that they don’t want to become habits.

Take the habit of drinking for example…

You often hear the advice that drinking in moderation is okay, and that moderation is defined as “one or two drinks a day.�

I’ve had many clients say that they enjoy one or two drinks every night. They defend their behavior by arguing that “research says it’s good for you� (especially red wine), and that they’re even getting good results from their workouts.

I tell them that this may be true, but I warn them to consider the long term consequences because any behavior you repeat every day is HABIT-FORMING.

We are all forming and reinforcing habits every day of our lives. Some are positive habits that move us towards our goals and some are negative habits that move us away from them. Some behaviors which appear relatively harmless as a single act are extremely negative in their cumulative effects, eventually causing much pain and anguish. Their opposites, if identified and cultivated, would bring us health, happiness and all else that is good.

Your subconscious mind is a machine. It functions exactly like a computer. In fact, your subconscious mind is the most magnificent and powerful computer ever created.

“Behold I set before you both a blessing and a curse� is not just a famous quote from the bible, it is a perfect description of the law that governs the function of your “subconscious computer.�

Your subconscious does not care what instructions you program into it or what habits you choose to develop. The subconscious is completely impartial and will carry out your “commands� - whether intentional or by default - to the letter, without question, 100% of the time.

Whatever thoughts you impress upon your subconscious repeatedly will eventually express themselves in your body or through your behaviors, and whatever behaviors you perform repeatedly, will eventually become habits.

Once a habit is established, it will require no conscious thought or effort to repeat in the future, and in fact, will take enormous strength to break… very much like swimming upstream against the current.

Knowing that your subconscious is your unquestioning servant, wouldn’t it be easier to harness the power of habit in your favor and be swept towards your goals by the current of positive habit?

I started working out at a very young age, and I’ve now been training non stop for over 20 years.

How have I become so consistent in my training? Pure habit force! There is never a “discussion� in my head about whether I should go to the gym… I just put on my gym clothes and go… automatically.

It’s HARD to miss a workout!

I guess you could say that me skipping a workout is like a drug addict skipping his fix. Odd analogy, perhaps, but isn’t it true that people become “addicted� to exercise?

What are you addicted to through force of habit? Are your habits positive or negative? Did you ever consider that you can harness the power of positive habits?

You can!

The question, of course, is HOW?

It seems so hard to form new positive habits, and maybe even harder to break bad ones.

Well, it takes a method… you need a strategy. People have written entire books on this, but let me offer you 4 quick and simple tips you can use right away to harness the power of positive habits in your life:

1. Cultivate Awareness

Ignorance is not bliss. Awareness is bliss. You are on auto pilot and probably don’t even realize it. 99% of the actions you take every day are habits. Some are positive, some are negative. All are carried out automatically without conscious thought required. You don’t have to think about how to tie your shoelaces anymore.

That “skill� has long since been filed away in your subconscious mind. You don’t have to think about how to drive your car… that function too, has long since been filed away in your subconscious (but do you remember the first time you tried to drive… especially if it was a stick shift?)

And so it is with dozens of other behaviors you carry out every day. And thank God that they’re automated… can you imagine if you had to think about them? (your brain would explode!)

The question is, do you have yourself programmed on auto pilot with negative habits or positive ones? If you don’t know the answer, you’d better take an inventory of your habits, and identify any limiting habits that you weren’t even conscious of until just now. As the old self help maxim says, “You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know you have one.�

2. Begin with your mind, and your body will follow

U.S. Anderson once wrote, “Success isn’t the result of hard work, it is the result of right thinking.�

At first, this may not appear to make sense, because obviously you must take action (work hard) in order to succeed. However, by examining this statement on a deeper level, you realize it is 100% accurate because actions are a result of our thinking and our mental programming. Therefore, the logical place to begin when you want success, is in your mind, by changing your thoughts and changing the programming that causes your habitual actions. Success begins in your own mind.

The thought always gives birth to the action. Too many people focus on “forcing� behaviors, but force negates and willpower fails you in the long term. The real power lies in your thoughts which create the habitual behaviors. To change the behavior, you DON’T USE WILLPOWER alone, you simply trace the behavior back to the thought patterns that created it and change the thoughts.

3. Replace negative habits with positive ones

Nature abhors a vacuum. If you manage to simply remove a negative habit, it leaves a vacuum begging to be filled. Often the bad habit returns to re-occupy its old space or another bad habit simply takes it’s place.

The way to get rid of a bad habit forever is to replace it with a positive one. This is especially easy and effective when it comes to food choices. If there is a particular food you habitually eat and know you shouldn’t, don’t just try to eliminate it. Instead find a better choice to replace it with. Each time you feel the urge for the old food, reach for the new one instead. It’s a simple process of substitution.

4. Never repeat a negative behavior if you don’t want it to become a habit; repeat, reinforce and reward positive behaviors you DO want to become habits

Suppose you’ve managed to haul your butt to the gym a few times a week, but you hate training legs. So you gleefully finish your upper body, then say to yourself, “Ah, I don’t need to do my legs today… I’ll do them next time.� Sure enough, next time rolls around and the same urge pops into your mind… “My legs are fine… It’s my chest and arms I really care about most.� So you blow off legs again.

Right there in the moment, you must become aware of what’s about to happen, and catch yourself. What’s “about to happen?� A negative habit is about to begin forming.

Forming a brand new positive habit is not all that difficult - all it takes is about 21 days of conscious effort for the behavior to be turned over to subconscious control.

Getting rid of negative habits is more difficult, so the best way to avoid falling under their influence is to stop them from forming in the first place. If you do something once… no problem. But if you’re tempted to do it twice… kill it, before it grows roots.

www.fitren.com

You’ve thought about running a marathon because the glory of such an accomplishment invites enthusiasm and yearning within you. You begin a marathon-training program but soon realize it’s not going to be easy. Watching the experience-hardened, power-lunged veteran runners, you find yourself saying, “Well, I guess they can do it, but I can’t.”

Or you look in the mirror and realize once again that 15 fewer pounds would do you and your waistline a world of good. But you’ve tried to diet before. “Well, I guess I just can’t lose weight,” you decide.

But think for a moment. In both the preceding examples, just why “can’t” you?

That’s not a rhetorical question. Really think about it! Is there any logical reason you’d embrace as to why others can accomplish something but you can’t? Of course not! But somewhere along the way, you’ve programmed your subconscious mind to accept that for whatever reason, you “can’t.”

Recognize that this is a false, delusive mode of thinking. And I’m now going to show you how to change it so a positive, success-oriented mode of thinking incites affirmative actions and behavior.

First of all, understand that the notion “you can’t” is a decided lie. The bountiful goodness of life–happiness, health, success, accomplishment–is nature’s overriding purpose. Success, and all it entails, is what’s supposed to happen to you. And you have only to attune your mind to dwell upon and embrace these basic life purposes to become a channel which creates these qualities in your life!

In other words, as you think, so you become. An irrefutable law of attraction operates in this world. With undeviating precision and justice, it moves you toward those things in accord with your dominant state of mind. So if you say–and believe–that you can’t do something, you won’t. If, on the other hand, you embrace the idea that you can and you must do it, then you’re invoking the natural law of attraction to perfectly work out your individual positive demand.

And so from this time forward, every time you think you can’t, resolve to think you MUST!

As a peak performance hypnotherapist, I’ve worked with hundreds of athletes and fitness-minded individuals such as yourself. And I’ve always found that the word “can’t” is nothing more than a delusive cover-up. It’s never a well thought-out, experience-confirmed assessment of your real ability. Usually people don’t consider this idea in regard to feats truly impossible, such as breaststroking across the Pacific Ocean or flapping their arms and “flying to the moon.” Rather, they’ll say, “I can’t lose weight” or “I just can’t ask my boss for a raise,” attaching it to concerns that they absolutely can act upon and succeed with! In actuality, such an “I can’t” mode of thinking only means you’ve embraced delusion and have not accepted the latent resourcefulness which would demonstrate that you irrefutably COULD!

To reinforce “I can’t” is a negative self-suggestion which prevents accomplishment and happiness–which are possibilities for you–from manifesting in your life. Through constant projection of this notion, it first becomes an impoverishing habit of thought, which, as you’re aware, limits you. But after the “I can’t” mode sets in and is reinforced long enough, it becomes a joy-killing, success-precluding belief. You somehow convince yourself that the untruth of “I can’t” is truthful, and you then find your experience confirming this idea.

And what happens when your subconscious accepts this false premise? It keeps you from testing yourself, from challenging self-imposed limitations, from acting with fierce conviction to triumph. You believe, for example, that the joy of completing a marathon is reserved for others but not for you, because you “can’t.” You believe that a perfectly trim and chiseled physique is for others who are genetically prone to achieve it, while you “can’t.” You believe that the full fruits of life’s harvest are for other “lucky” or “special” people, but not for you because you “can’t.”

But just what is it they have that you don’t? The answer: Absolutely nothing! The strength and purposefulness of life that they’ve converted into success exist within everybody, and this life power always CAN and always DOES! Look around you and you’re sure to find people who you’d consider “lesser” than you who’ve achieved magnificent success. They’ve reached these levels because they’ve overcome this “I’m not supposed to/I can’t” bind, enlisting instead their full creative power to surmount obstacles and masterfully triumph!

And if they can, you can too! (Just what would it be that you could tell yourself which would lead you to believe that you “couldn’t?”)

For you to actually believe that you “can’t” (in any aspect of your life) strengthens a delusion that prevents you from acting purposefully to find out if you indeed can. And so, knowing that can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and couldn’t are predominantly delusions based more on habit than fact, from this moment on every time you find yourself entertaining thoughts suggesting “can’t,” immediately mentally exclaim, down to the depth of your soul, that you MUST!

Whenever or wherever you find yourself entertaining thoughts suggesting “can’t”, STOP yourself at once and give the deliberate mental command, “Now I must do this thing because I’m much bigger than I’ve let myself be, and my abilities are superior to this illusion “can’t” suggests!” Then immediately generate specific, targeted action reflecting a commitment to prove to yourself you ARE more capable than your limited thinking led you to “believe.”

This is a simple and direct first step toward overriding unchallenged delusions of inability with self-induced, success-directed thoughts and actions. By exclaiming and reinforcing “I must” when notions of “I can’t” emerge in your mind, you’re reprogramming fictitious ideas of ineptness with capacities possessed by a tougher, more capable and more resourceful aspect of you. You’re firmly deciding it’s NOT okay for your past to continue undermining your participation in life. You’re refusing to acknowledge that you’re anything less than the FULL power and potential of life’s natural purpose - which is always success-oriented — which instinctively inclines toward more, and which always CAN!

By this profound exclamation of “I must”–spoken or thought with conviction–you’re also accomplishing something deeper than obliterating the “I can’t” mode. You’re accessing a powerful capacity residing within the potential of every human being. You’re unleashing that part of you that doesn’t have to think about what to do, how to do it, or what’s right and wrong, proper or improper, based on perceived consequences. This part of you simply does what’s necessary to triumph–directly, instinctively, automatically, and perfectly!

What happens when you’re suddenly cut off by another vehicle on the freeway? All your reaction capacity, control, strength, decisiveness and even your creativity mobilize into a congruent action force. You don’t ponder in your mind what you should do, or whether you “can” do it. You just perform spontaneously, exactly as you need to achieve a specific result. This happens automatically.

This same heightened power, that instinctive action capacity toward performance and accomplishment beyond your “normal” experience, can be channeled to fuel actions promoting long-term goals–such as fitness, financial success, or whatever you desire out of life. And instead of allowing life-and-death situations to be the sole activators of this potential, you can now actively invoke it through reinforcing “I Must” to boldly challenge–and crush–the delusion of “I can’t” every time it enters your mind!

So generating the “I Must” command isn’t a ploy to just bolster your ego or make you feel good. If you consistently invoke it every time you think you “can’t,” it becomes a catalyst–a compelling charge to take action in a context where you’d otherwise resign to limitation.

The more you continue acting boldly to purposefully dispel the illusion of “can’t,” (replacing it with “I Must”) the more you’ll recognize “can’t” as just as old, ignorance-based habit of thought. Your whole self-concept will re-form and strengthen as you become aware that you’re much more competent and resourceful–much more capable–than you ever let yourself be. And you’ll be surprised, in fact, genuinely delighted, to find out you CAN! The only reason that you never had before is that you never took the initiative to override your own negative self-suggestions. But now, through the “I Must” strategy, you’re going to do just that! And things you may once have thought impossible for you will start becoming eye-opening, esteem-building accomplishments–blatant self-initiated personal TRIUMPHS!

So right here, right now, say firmly and boldly to yourself, “EVERY TIME I THINK I ‘CAN’T', I MUST!” And as you do, f-e-e-l the essence of this idea pulsing vigorously though you as you allow the power it engenders to flood every muscle, nerve and fiber within you. And know that because you feel the passion and energy connected with this idea, it’s not just an empty-worded slogan, but a definite potential within you, awaiting to serve you as you want and need it to, RIGHT NOW!

In the beginning, you’ll have to consciously, willfully interject your “I Must” statement in the face of every “can’t” notion that arises. And each time you do this you advance the goal of establishing “I Must” as a natural, ingrained, spontaneous part of your thinking.

As an aid to further accomplishing this goal, employ the following process during every “I can’t” episode your mind projects. [*Do Not Use This Process While Driving Or While Engaging In Any Activity Requiring Your Comprehensive Alertness!]

Immediately upon becoming aware you’re thinking “I can’t” in relation to anything, perform the following steps:

1.) Close your eyelids down and inhale deeply.

2.) Think or, if appropriate, verbalize emphatically: “EVERY TIME I THINK I ‘CAN’T', I MUST!”

3.) In your imagination, project a scenario of yourself as a bold, deliberate personality of action, taking the initiative to do, succeed and achieve with the area in which the delusive notion “I can’t” emerged.

4.) Sense and deeply feel the realness and impact of your action specificity. As you do, step into the picture and, while continuing to generate those actions purposefully geared toward succeeding, and feeling the accompanying sensations of energy and conviction surging through you…

5.) Implicitly experience the power, rightfulness, competence and sensory impact reflecting you are confidently taking charge, while perceiving yourself doing, saying and expressing yourself in that specific way which convincingly accomplishes the task!

6.) Experience yourself fully creating or accomplishing the exact outcome you anticipate will occur from your straightforward, success-targeted “I Must” actions.

7.) Savoring the empowering suggestions of “I CAN,” open your eyes and immediately start do-ing–in exact accordance with your “I Must” conviction!

You can use this strategy to program the “I Must” idea so it becomes a subconscious conviction. And steadily, you’ll find “I Must” becoming your rule of thumb, and “I CAN” becoming the predominant fact of your life!

www.fitren.com

Not long ago, one of the members of my health club poked her head in my office for some advice and assistance. Linda was a 46 year old mother of two, and she had been a member for over a year. She had been working out sporadically, with (not surprisingly) sporadic results. On that particular day, she seemed to have enthusiasm and a twinkle in her eye that I hadn’t seen before.

“I want to enter a before and after fitness contest called the -12 week body transformation challenge.” I could win money and prizes and even get my picture in a magazine.”

“I want to lose THIS”, she continued, as she grabbed the body fat on her stomach. “Do you think it’s a good idea?”

Linda was not “obese” by any means, she just had the typical “moderate roll” of abdominal body fat and a little bit of thigh/hip fat that many forty-something females struggle with.

“I think it’s a great idea” I reassured her. “Competitions are great for motivation.” When you have a deadline and you dangle a “carrot” like that prize money in front of you, it can keep you focused and more motivated than ever.

Linda was eager and rarin’ to go. “Will you help me? I have this enrollment kit and I need my body fat measured.”

“No problem,” I said as I pulled out my Skyndex fat caliper, which is used to measure body fat percentage with a “pinch an inch” test.

When I finished, I read the results to her from the caliper display: “Twenty-seven percent. Room for improvement, but not bad; it’s about average for your age group.”

She wasn’t overjoyed at being “average”. “Yeah, but it’s not good either. Look at THIS,” she complained as again she grabbed a handful of stomach fat. “I want to get my body fat down to 19%, I heard that was a good body fat level.”

I agreed that 19% was a great goal, but it would take a lot of work because average fat loss is usually about a half a percent a week, or six percent in twelve weeks. Her goal, to lose eight percent in twelve weeks was ambitious.

She smiled and insisted, “I’m a hard worker. I can do it”

Indeed she was and indeed she did. She was a machine! Not only did she never miss a day in the gym, she trained HARD. Whenever I left my office and took a stroll through the gym, she was up there pumping away with everything she had. She told me her diet was the strictest it had ever been in her life and she didn’t cheat at all. I believed her. And it started to show, quickly.

Each week she popped into my office to have her body fat measured again, and each week it went down, down, down. Consistently she lost three quarters of a percent per week - well above the average rate of fat loss - and on two separate occasions, I recall her losing a full one percent body fat in just seven days.

Someone conservative might have said she was overtraining, but when we weighed her and calculated her lean body mass, we saw that she hadn’t lost ANY muscle - only fat. Her results were simply exceptional!

She was ecstatic, and needless to say, her success bred more success and she kept after it like a hungry tiger for the full twelve weeks.

On week twelve, day seven, she showed up in my office for her final weigh-in and body fat measurement. She was wearing a pair of formerly tight blue jeans and they were FALLING OFF HER! “Look, look, look,” she repeated giddily as she tugged at her waistband, which was now several inches too large.

As I took her body fat, I have to say, I was impressed. She hadn’t just lost a little fat, she was “RIPPED!”

During week twelve she dropped from 18% to 17% body fat, for a grand total of 10% body fat lost. She surpassed her goal of 19% by two percent. I was now even more impressed, because I had only seen a handful of people lose that much body fat in three months.

You should have seen her! She started hopping up and down for joy like she was on a pogo stick! She was beaming & grinning from ear to ear! She practically knocked me over as she jumped up and gave me a hug - “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Don’t thank me,” I said, “You did it, I just measured your body fat.”

She thanked me again anyway and then said she had to go have her “after” pictures taken.

Then something very, very strange happened. She stopped coming to the gym. Her “disappearance” was so abrupt, I was worried and I called her. She never picked up, so I just left messages. No return phone call.

It was about four months later when I finally saw Linda again. The giddy smile was gone, replaced with a sullen face, a droopy posture and a big sigh when I said hello and asked where she’d been.

“I stopped working out after the contest… and I didn’t even win.”

“You looked like a winner to me, no matter what place you came in” I insisted, “but why did you stop, you were doing so well!”

“I don’t know, I blew my diet and then just completely lost my motivation. Now look at me, my weight is right back where I started and I don’t even want to know my body fat.”

“Well, I’m glad to see you back in here again. Write down some new goals for yourself and remember to think long term too. Fitness isn’t a just 12 week program you know, it’s a lifestyle - you have to do it every day - like… forever.”

She nodded her head and finished her workout, still with that defeated look on her face. Unfortunately, she never again come anywhere near the condition she achieved for that competition, and for the rest of the time she was a member at our club, she slipped right back into the sporadic on and off workout pattern.

Linda was not an isolated case. I’ve seen the same thing happen with countless men and women of all ages and fitness levels from beginners to competitive bodybuilders. In fact, it happens to millions of people who “go on” diets, lose a lot of weight, then quickly “go off” the diet and gain the weight right back.

What causes people to burn so brightly with enthusiasm and motivation and then burn out just as quickly? Why do so many people succeed brilliantly in the short term but fail 95 out of 100 times in the long term? Why do so many people reach their fitness goals but struggle to maintain them?

The answer is simple: Health and fitness is for life, not for “12 weeks.”

You can avoid the on and off, yo-yo cycle of fitness ups and downs. You can get in great shape and stay in great shape. You can even get in shape and keep getting in better and better shape year after year, but it’s going to take a very different philosophy than most people subscribe to. The seven tips below will guide you.

These guidelines are quite contrary to the quick fix philosophies prevailing in the weight loss and fitness world today. Applying them will take patience, discipline and dedication. Just remember, the only thing worse than getting no results is getting great results and losing them.

1) Don’t “go on” diets. When you “go on” a diet, the underlying assumption is that at some point you have to “go off” it. This isn’t just semantics, it’s the primary reason most diets fail. By definition, a “diet” is a temporary and often drastic change in your eating behaviors and/or a severe restriction of calories or food, which is ultimately, not maintainable. If you reach your goal, the diet is officially “over” and then you “go off” (returning to the way you used to eat). Health and fitness is not temporary; it’s not a “diet.” It’s something you do every day of your life. Unless you approach nutrtion from a lifestyle perspective, you’re doomed from the starticles

2) Eat the same foods all year round. Permanent fat loss is best achieved by eating mostly the same types of foods all year round. Naturally, you should include a wide variety of healthy foods so you get the full spectrum of nutrients you need, but there should be consistency, month in, month out. When you want to lose body fat, there’s no dramatic change necessary - you don’t need to eat totally different foods - it’s a simple matter of eating less of those same healthy foods and exercising more.

3) Have a plan for easing into maintenance. Let’s face it - sometimes a nutrition program needs to be more strict than usual. For example, peaking for a bodybuilding or fitness contest requires an extremely strict regimen that’s different than the rest of the year. As a rule, the stricter your nutrition program, the more you must plan ahead and the more time you must allow for a slow, disciplined transition into maintenance. Failure to plan for a gradual transition will almost always result in bingeing and a very rapid, hard fall “off the wagon.”

4) Focus on changing daily behaviors and habits one or two at a time. Rather than making huge, multiple changes all at once, focus on changing one or two habits/behaviors at a time. Most psychologists agree that it takes about 21 days of consistent effort to replace an old bad habit with a new positive one. As you master each habit, and it becomes as ingrained into your daily life as brushing your teeth, then you simply move on to the next one. That would be at least 17 new habits per year. Can you imagine the impact that would have on your health and your life? This approach requires a lot of patience, but the results are a lot more permanent than if you try to change everything in one fell swoop. This is also the least intimidating way for a beginner to start making some health-improving changes to their lifestyle.

5) Make goal setting a lifelong habit. Goal setting is not a one-time event, its a process that never ends. For example, if you have a 12 week goal to lose 6% bodyfat, what are you going to do after you achieve it? Lose even more fat? Gain muscle? Maintain? What’s next? On week 13, day 1, if you have no direction and nothing to keep you going, you’ll have nothing to keep you from slipping back into old patterns. Every time you achieve a goal, you must set another one. Having daily and weekly short term goals means that you are literally setting goals continuously and never stopping.

6) Allow a reasonable time frame to reach your goal. It’s important to set deadlines for your fitness and weight loss goals. It’s also important to set ambitious goals, but you must allow a reasonable time frame for achieving them. Time pressure is often the motivating force that helps people get in the best shape of their lives. But when the deadline is unrealistic for a particular goal (like 30 pounds in 30 days), then crash dieting or other extreme measures are often taken to get there before the bell. The more rapidly you lose weight, the more likely you are to lose muscle and the faster the weight will come right back on afterwards. Start sooner. Don’t wait until mid-May to think about looking good for summer.

7) Extend your time perspective. Successful people in every field always share one common character trait: Long term time perspective. Some of the most successful Japanese technology and manufacturing companies have 100 year and even 250-year business plans. If you want to be successful in maintaining high levels of fitness, you must set long term goals: One year, Ten years, Even fifty years! You also must consider what the long term consequences might be as a result of using any “radical” diet, training method or ergogenic aid. The people who had it but lost it are usually the ones who failed to think long term or acknowledge future consequences. It’s easy for a 21 year old to live only for today, and it may even seem ridiculous to set 25 year goals, but consider this: I’ve never met a 40 or 60 year old who didn’t care about his or her health and appearance, but I have met 40 or 60 year olds who regretted not caring 25 years ago.

www.fitren.com

The word “intensity� is thrown around a lot in fitness circles. We hear it is important in relation to the results we seek. We are told we should always perform workouts with a desired training intensity in mind. We hear it should be neither too low nor too high.

But what is intensity, really? Why is it important? How do you control it, and what are the most effective ways to manipulate it in a training program? Given all the hype about intensity, it is surprising how seldom these basic questions are properly addressed. So let’s address them, once and for all…

Although intensity is relevant to both cardio and strength training, my focus in this article will be on cardio.

It’s about energy
In exercise, intensity refers to the rate at which your body is currently producing energy in relation to the maximum rate your body is able to produce energy for a specific activity. There are almost infinite degrees of intensity. For example, suppose you are running 5 miles an hour. If you increase your pace just slightly to 5.1 miles an hour, your body is producing a little more energy and is therefore working at a higher intensity.

Muscles can produce energy through three energy systems: the aerobic system and two separate anaerobic systems. The lower the intensity of exercise, the more energy is produced aerobically. The higher the intensity, the more energy is produced anaerobically.

Intensity is important because it is the primary determinant of how your body adapts to exercise. By training at a certain intensity level, your body adapts over time to become better able to train at that same intensity level. The more time you spend at that level, the more pronounced these adaptations become. However, these adaptations reach limits, so it’s important to know which training intensities are connected to which results. Once you have this knowledge, you can emphasize the training intensities that lead to the results you seek.

Three Ranges
Although there are innumerable degrees of intensity, there are three general intensity ranges that you’ll want to target in workouts. In the aerobic intensity range, the aerobic energy system is trained primarily. At “threshold� intensity, the first anaerobic system (called anaerobic glycolysis) is trained primarily. And at “sprint� intensity, the second anaerobic system (the creatine phosphate system) is trained. Each leads to its own set of beneficial adaptations, so your program should include all of them. Let’s take them one by one.

Aerobic Intensity
In aerobic metabolism, oxygen is used to break down fatty acids and glucose to release energy. The aerobic system produces harmless byproducts (carbon dioxide, water, and heat). For this reason, and because the supply of its energy substrates is great, aerobic-intensity exercise can continue for relatively long periods of time, especially in well-conditioned people. But because aerobic metabolism is relatively slow, this energy system is inadequate to support high-intensity efforts.

Exercising at aerobic intensity results in many positive adaptations. It strengthens the heart and the entire cardiorespiratory system, which not only results in general good health but also enhances performance in all sports, every form of exercise, and any life activity you can name. Aerobic conditioning is truly the foundation of fitness in the sense that it prepares the body to handle higher-intensity exercise. For this reason, beginners should also do several weeks of aerobic-intensity training before adding higher-intensity workouts, and aerobic workouts should remain an integral part of even the most advanced training regimen.

Aerobic intensity exercise also increases your endurance, so that you can sustain activity for longer periods of time. It does this by increasing your body’s fat burning efficiency and glucose storage capacity. Aerobic-intensity exercise is also an excellent means of improving body composition, because the rate of fat burning peaks in the middle of this intensity range.

Calories are burned more rapidly in threshold- and sprint-intensity workouts than in aerobic ones. However, aerobic-intensity exercise can be maintained much longer than exercise at higher intensities. So, the overall calorie-burning potential of aerobic exercise is greater.

Aerobic Workout: In your modality of choice (jogging, elliptical trainer, etc.), maintain a steady pace for 20 minutes or longer. The first and last few minutes should be very easy. The middle portion of the workout should be performed at an effort level of roughly 7 on a 1-10 scale.

Controlling the intensity: Monitoring your heart rate is a useful way to control intensity during aerobic-intensity workouts. During the main body of these workouts, keep your heart rate between 75 percent and 80 percent of the highest level it reaches during your speed-intensity workouts (see below).

Threshold Intensity
In anaerobic glycolysis, glucose is broken down for energy without the use of oxygen. This process is faster than aerobic metabolism, so it can support higher-intensity efforts. However, glycolysis produces metabolic waste products that inhibit muscle contractions, resulting in exhaustion. The aerobic system can use these waste products as fuels, but when exercise intensity crosses a certain threshold, wastes are produced faster than they can be used. They then accumulate in the muscles, which begin to “burn� and feel weak, and pretty soon you’re pooped.

Working out at an intensity level that is slightly above this threshold also carries significant benefits. To begin with, it simply enhances the cardiovascular benefits that come from aerobic training. If you do only aerobic-intensity workouts for a prolonged period of time, your results will level off. But by adding threshold workouts into your program, you can continue your progress.

Threshold workouts are also effective in transforming body composition. They burn calories at a faster rate than aerobic workouts, so they represent a more time-efficient level of exercise. However, keep in mind that threshold workouts are only beneficial when they build on a base of aerobic training.

For more serious exercisers and athletes, threshold intensity training greatly enhances the body’s ability to recover between hard efforts in a workout or competition. This allows you to do more advanced workouts and get a more pronounced effect from them.

Threshold Workout: In your modality of choice, warm up for a few minutes. Next, perform a series of 90-second hard intervals (effort level 9) followed by two-minute easy recoveries. Do at least four intervals and as many as 12. Cool down for at least five minutes.

Controlling the intensity: Perform each interval at the fastest rate (or highest output level) you can maintain through the end of the last interval.

Sprint Intensity
The second anaerobic energy system, the creatine phosphate system, fuels maximum and near-maximum efforts such as sprints and heavy weightlifting. Only tiny amounts of creatine phosphate are stored in the muscles, so this energy system cannot support efforts lasting longer than 15 seconds.

Sprint-intensity workouts burn more calories per minute than all workouts of lesser intensity. They also keep the body’s metabolic rate elevated for hours after the workout. Aerobic and threshold exercise cause a similar “afterburn� effect, but it is not as pronounced. However, this does not mean you should do only sprint-intensity cardio workouts if your goal is weight loss and you have limited time to work out. Sprint workouts are too stressful to perform more than once a week or so, and again, they’re only effective when they build on an aerobic foundation.

Sprint workouts are also an excellent supplement to strength training because they condition the same energy system and develop the same muscle fibers. Serious bodybuilders and strength athletes should therefore put a greater emphasis on this type of training, after building up to it.

Sprint workout: In your modality of choice, warm up for a few minutes. Next, perform a series of 20-second sprints (effort level 10) followed by one-minute easy recoveries. Do at least six and no more than 20 sprints. Cool down for at least five minutes.

Controlling he intensity: As in threshold workouts, perform each interval at the fastest rate (or highest output level) you can maintain through the end of the last interval.

Putting It All Together
If you’re just beginning to exercise, you should perform only aerobic-intensity cardio workouts for several weeks. Start with short workouts you can handle and gradually increase their duration until you have a solid base of aerobic fitness. For example, on a schedule of three cardio workouts per week, you might go just 10 minutes per session in the first week, 15 minutes in the second, 18 in the third, and 20 in the fourth.

If and when you have a good aerobic base, simply perform the three cardio workout types in a recurring rotation. This is the best way to use cardio training to support strength training to achieve well-rounded fitness and ideal body composition in a time-efficient manner. Here’s how a typical week of training might look:

Mon. Tues. Wed. Thurs. Fri. Sat. Sun.
Off Strength Sprint Strength Thresh. Strength Aerobic
Train. Cardio Train. Train. Train. Cardio

Every 12 weeks or so, do only aerobic intensity workouts for a period of two weeks. This will allow your body to build a new foundation atop previous gains and achieve even greater results when you return to high-intensity interval training.

www.eas.com

Recently I became aware that my teenage daughter had an eating disorder. Out of respect for her I will skip the details. I will only say that it has been costly and difficult. Shortly after becoming aware of her condition I considered the gambit of possible causes. Television, pop culture, peer pressure, ME! In all likelihood I am the primary suspect behind her obsession with food. At the very least I didn’t do her any favors. A competitive bodybuilder typically lives the sport. You don’t leave it at the gym, you don’t put it back in the bag like a golf club. We aren’t judged by typically sport criteria, we are judged by our appearance.

Changing Your Life

While the general population is concerned with appearance, we are obsessed with it. Like many of you, I plan my meals. I time them. I don’t eat for the pleasure of it, I eat according to my current goal. For my wife & I this became a very divisive issue. Daily she would ask me what I wanted for supper that evening and daily I was unable to answer her. It didn’t matter what she prepared, I wouldn’t be able to eat it. I didn’t expect her to assume my lifestyle and as such I took full responsibility for my meals. I had to be lean, I had to be muscular, I had to be strong. Weight training provided the strength and size while attention to diet gave me definition.

This is what I had exposed my daughter to. During her formative teenage years she was treated nightly to a Father who could only speak of how his workout went that day. She would see me with my shirt off, checking out my abs in the mirror. I have won several competitions and am considered a role model. What I hadn’t considered was the type of role model I had been to my family.

Some time has passed and I believe (hope) that my daughter’s condition is under control but now I have to wonder about my own. Why am I like this? How did I get this way? Is my experience typical of the competitive bodybuilding community?

Muscle Dysmorphia & Bodybuilding

Modern psychology has coined a term to describe what can only be viewed as anorexia in reverse. Muscle dysmorphia (bigorexia). People with this condition feel physically inadequate. Regardless of their physical stature they feel small. Some will resort to wearing baggy cloths to cover their perceived inadequacy, many will resort to steroids, and some will become reclusive. As I sit here writing this, emotionally I refuse to accept that I have this condition and yet intellectually I recognize that I have many of its symptoms. Unlike the above I do not wear baggy cloths. I wear tight shirts. I like to be noticed. In restaurants, stores, anywhere.

People notice, I see their eyes follow me. Often people stop to ask questions and I like to answer them. On the other hand I still feel small. When I diet to increase definition prior to a competition I feel like I am letting people down. I’m not big enough. I recognize that statistically I am physically above normal and yet emotionally this just doesn’t seem to register. When considering weight and height my body mass index says that I am obese, very obese, and yet I can crunch down on a well defined six pack. I am far from alone here. I don’t know that I have ever spoken with a competitive bodybuilder who has expressed satisfaction with his or her physique. We constantly strive for a goal only to have it move just before we reach it. It is easier to give advice than to take it and I have found myself counseling other lifters on multiple occasions.

I see that they have made progress and comment on it. I have seen so many people come and go over the years that I try to encourage people and congratulate them on there physical progress. More often than not however they respond that they are not yet where they want to be. They want more. They want to be bigger. It is then that I tell them to take a moment to accept that they are even now where they wanted to be at one time and this is what I am asking you to do right now. Stop allowing the goal to move before it can be reached. Make your goals small and obtainable. Set them in stone. Allowing the goal to move only perpetuates our feelings of inadequacy. It isn’t fair to ourselves or fun for the people who have to endure or obsessions. In competitive track & field a high jumper sets his goals an inch at a time.

In higher levels of competition the goal may vary by only fractions of an inch. It would not be fair to move the bar before the athlete completes his jump and yet this is exactly what many of us are doing to ourselves. We set an initial strength or physique goal only to decide that it is not enough as we approach it. But who moves the bar? We do! Stop it, allow yourself to reach a definable goal and when you do, acknowledge it. Bask in it. Celebrate it. Accept that you have accomplished something and achieved something that was important to you. In doing so you will be forced to recognize your progress and not to focus on perceived inadequacies. In reality what you consider to be a small or weak area is merely a symptom of a much deeper issue that we are attempting to mask with a physical band aid.

Go Back To Your Youth

Consider your youth. As a child I was very small and skinny. I was younger than most in my class and as such was a late bloomer. Intellectually I could rival most but physically I was out of step and nowhere was this more apparent than gym class. The mandatory showers revealed that others were reaching puberty far ahead of myself and I could only wonder what was wrong with me. Why didn’t I have body hair? Why wasn’t I growing? As a result I was afraid of girls. I was considered to be cute and had several girlfriends but still considered myself to be somehow less “manly” then the other boys. Youth is not without its tormentors and I was exposed to several. The “skinny, small, weak, pus$y” comments still haunt me to this day. At the time my only compensation was to take up a keen interest in martial arts however my parents would not allow me to take lessons.

Still, I studied on my own trying to mask my perceived shortcomings with an external illusion of being “tough”. When I finally did reach physical maturity I was elated to be of average height even though I was still very skinny. The damage was done however and I was firmly entrenched in a mindset that would affect not only my lifestyle but the major decisions of my life as well. Many people suffer from Muscle dysmorphia and not all become bodybuilders. Some buy powerful motorcycles or fast cars. Some will become very powerful in business while others will become controlling and or abusive spouses. Review your own life beginning with early childhood. Were you made to feel small and inadequate and if so, how did it affect you? Do you feel as if you were scared by these feelings? Are you obsessed with wanting to get back at those who hurt you? Do you feel as if you have something to prove? While I believe very strongly in bodybuilding and the bodybuilding lifestyle I recognize that many of us are using bodybuilding to mask the symptoms of a disorder for which we are not responsible but unwilling participants nonetheless.

Only when we accept and recognize the deeper issues that brought us to this point will we begin to initiate the healing process. Like an aspirin, bodybuilding only mask the symptom, it does nothing about the cause. This is why it is so vitally important for you to recognize and rejoice in your successes, to accept yourself as you are. It is also important for you to recognize that there is a life outside of bodybuilding and to expand yourself as an individual. For some bodybuilders the experience of an injury that prohibits continued training is equivalent to the complete loss of identity.

We so identify and relate to the temporary illusion of strength that we have created that it encapsulates the sum totality of our being. The twin towers of the World Trade Center took years to build but were laid to the ground in a matter of minutes. How much more fragile are we who are made only of flesh and bone. Broaden your horizon and try to experience the world beyond the gym and the physical culture. By spreading your roots you will be able to draw strength from more than one source.

Being Extreme

I know of some bodybuilders who don’t date or have any social life outside of the gym. They eat, sleep and breathe bodybuilding. Some are willing to die in the pursuit of their goal to be bigger. Does this sound extreme to you? I hope so, but are you currently involved in behavior that would have at one time seemed extreme as well?

Do you workout excessively?
Do you continue to train even while injured?
Do you forsake dinner engagements with friends or family because it will interfere with your routine?
Do you spend excessive amounts of money on supplements?
Do you use steroids?
Are you happy?

I have been honest with you in writing this paper and now I am asking you to be honest with yourself. Life should be enjoyed, not endured. If you feel that this article has hit home than I strongly encourage you to seek out a support group or to consider professional counseling. In doing so you may find that you can still be a bodybuilder and that you may actually come to enjoy it as well.

By: Kerry Dulin

Source: www.bodybuilding.com

Despite what many of the magazines say, all professional bodybuilders use either steroids or steroids in combination with other growth-enhancing drugs. Without manipulating hormones, it just isn’t possible to get that degree of muscularity, the paper-thin skin, and the continuing ability to pack on mass, despite sometimes having poor workout habits and relative ignorance of the principles involved that many pro bodybuilders have. Many supplement distributors, in order to sell their products, would have you believe otherwise.
Still, that’s no reason to give up. By using state-of-the-art training principles, consuming a nutrient-rich diet, and by getting proper amounts of rest, almost every person can make incredible changes in his or her physique. The competitive bodybuilder circuit may not be in your future, but building the kind of physique that gains you respect is certainly achievable, as are self-respect and robust health.

2 In order to get really big, you have to eat a super-high-calorie diet.

Well, that’s true; you’ll get really big if you eat a super high-calorie diet, but you’ll look like the Michelin Man’s fraternal twin. However, if you want to get big, lean-tissue wise, then super-high-calorie diets are probably not for you unless you are one of those very few people with metabolicrates so fast you can burn off these calories instead of depositing them as fat. Unfortunately, studies show that, in most people, about 65% of the new tissue gains brought about by high-calorie diets consists of fat! Of the remaining 35%, approximately 15% consists of increased intracellular fluid volume, leaving a very modest percentage attributable to increased lean muscle mass.
According to Dr Scott Connelly (MM2K, Spring 1992, p. 21), only about 20% to 25% of increased muscle growth stems from increased protein synthesis. The rest of the muscle growth is directly attributable to increased proliferation of the satellite cells in the basal lamina of muscle tissue, and dietary energy (calories) is not a key factor in the differentiation of these cells into new myofibres (muscle cells).
Of all factors determining muscle growth, prevention of protein breakdown (anti-catabolism) seems to be the most relevant, but adding adipose [fat] tissue through constant overfeeding can actually increase muscle pro- teolysis (breakdown). Furthermore, additional adipose mass can radically alter hormone balances which are responsible for controlling protein breakdown in muscle. Insulin balance, for one, which partially controls anti-catabolism in the body, is impaired by consistent overfeeding. So much for the eat-big-to-get-big philosophy!
Stay away from the super-high calorie diets unless you’re a genetic freak, or you’re woefully lean and don’t mind putting on fat [or you’re using appropriate pharmaceutical supplements].

3 If you eat a low-fat diet, it doesn’t matter how many calories you take in, you won’t gain any fat.

The bottom line is, if you exceed your energy requirements, you’ll gradually get fatter and fatter. It’s true that eating a diet rich in fat will pack on the pounds quicker for a variety of reasons, the most significant being that a gram of fat has nine calories as opposed to the four calories per gram that carbohydrates and proteins carry. Fat is also metabolized differently in the body. It takes a lesser amount of calories to assimilate the energy in ingested fat than it does to assimilate an equal (weight wise) amount of carbohydrates. Consequently, more fat calories get stored than carbohydrate calories. However, the gross intake of carbohydrates, as facilitated by many of the weight-gain powders, will make you fat very quickly.

4 The more you work out, the more you’ll grow.

No, no no. This is one of the most damaging myths that ever reared its ugly head. 95% of the pros will tell you that the biggest bodybuilding mistake they ever made was to over-train–and this happened even when they were taking steroids. Imagine how easy it is for the natural athlete to overtrain! When you train your muscles too often for them to heal, the end-result is zero growth and perhaps even losses. Working out every day, if you’re truly using the proper amount of intensity, will lead to gross overtraining. A body part, worked properly, ie. worked to complete, total muscular failure that recruited as many muscle fibers as physiologically possible, can take 5-10 days to heal.
To take it a step further, even working a different body part in the next few days might constitute overtraining. If you truly work your quads to absolute fiber-tearing failure, doing another power workout the next day that entails heavy bench-presses or deadlifts is going to, in all probability, inhibit gains. After a serious leg workout, your whole system mobilizes to heal and recover from the blow you’ve dealt it. How, then, can the body be expected to heal from an equally brutal workout the next day? It can’t, at least not without using some drugs to help deal with the catabolic processes going on in your body [and even they’re usually not enough .]
Learn to accept rest as a valuable part of your workout. You should probably spend as many days out of the gym as you do in it.

5 The longer you work out, the better.

It just isn’t necessary to do 20-30 sets for a body part, or even 10 sets like many ‘experts’ would have you believe. In fact, research has shown that it’s possible to completely fatigue a muscle in one set, provided that that set taxes a muscle completely, ie. incorporates as many muscle fibers as possible and takes them to the point of ischemic rigour where, rather than contract and relax, the muscle fibers freeze up, sort of like a microscopic version of rigor mortis. Any further contraction causes microscopic tearing. Hypertrophy is just one adaption to this kind of stress and it’s naturally the kind most bodybuilders are interested in.
This kind of intensity can usually be achieved by doing drop or break-down sets where you rep out, lower the weight, and continue doing reps until you either can’t do another rep or you’ve run out of weight. It can also be achieved by doing your maximum number of reps on a particular exercise: by a combination of will, tenacity, and short rest periods, you complete ten more reps. You achieve the short rest periods by locking out the weight-bearing joint in question without putting the weight down. In other words, completely surpass your normal pain and energy thresholds.
If you can truly work your muscle to the point described, it will afford you little, if any, benefit to do another set (Westcott, 1986). The exception would be the body parts that are so big that they have distinct geographical areas, like the back, which obviously has an upper, middle and lower part. The chest might also fall into this category, as it has a distinct upper and lower part, each with different insertion points.

6 You don’t have to be strong to be big

For a variety of reasons, people, even those with an equal amount of muscle mass, vary in strength enormously. It might have something to do with fast-twitch/slow-twitch muscle ratios, or it might have something to do with the efficiency of nerve pathways or even limb length and the resultant torque. But it is still a relative term. To get bigger muscles, you have to lift heavier weight, and you, not the guy next door, have to become stronger — stronger than you were. Increasing muscle strength in the natural athlete, except in a very few, rare instances, requires that the tension applied to muscle fibers be high. If the tension applied to muscle fibers are light, maximal growth will not occur (Lieber, 1992).

7 The training programmes that work best for pro bodybuilders are best for everyone.

You see it happen every day in gyms across the country. Some bodybuilding neophyte will walk up to a guy who looks like he’s an escaped attraction from Jurassic Park and ask him how he trains. The biggest guy in the gym likely got that way from either taking a tremendous amount of drugs and/or by being genetically pre-dispositioned to get big. Follow a horse home and you’ll find horse parents. The guy in your gym who is best bodybuilder is the guy who has made the most progress and done the most to his physique using natural techniques. He may still be a pencil neck, but he may have put on 40 pounds [19kg] of lean body mass to get where he is, and that, in all probability, took some know-how. That person probably doesn’t overtrain, keeps his sets down to a minimum, and uses great form and concentration on the eccentric (negative) portion of each exercise repetition.
Many pros spend hours and hours doing innumerable sets–so many it would far surpass the average person’s recuperative abilities. If average people followed the routines of average pro bodybuilders, they would, in effect, start to whittle down what muscle mass they did have or, at best, make only a tiny bit of progress after a couple of years.

8 You can’t build muscle on a sub-maintenance calorie intake diet.

It may be a little harder, and it may require a little bit more know-how and a little bit more conscientious effort, but it can be done. The fact is, the obese state in humans and animals is not universally correlated with absolute levels of caloric intake and neither is the accrual of lean body mass. The ability to realize changes in lean/fat ratios is regulated by components of the automatic nervous system working in concert with several endocrine hormones; this is called nutrient partitioning. For example, certain beta-agonist drugs like Clenbuterol increase meat production in cattle over 30% while simultaneously diminishing bodyfat without increasing the amount or composition of their feed. Other drugs, including growth hormone, certain oestrogens, cortisol, ephedrine, and IGF-1 are all examples of re-partitioning agents. All increase oxygen consumption at the expense of fat storage–independent of energy intake!
Drugs are not the only way to do this, however. It’s true that a significant component of this mechanism is genetically linked, but specific nutrients, in specific amounts, when combined with an effective training programme, can markedly improve the lean/fat ratio of adult humans. MET-Rx is one such nutrient re-partitioning agent, and several companies are trying to duplicate its successes [warning: one of the authors of this article has a significant financial stake in Substrate Technologies, the makers of MET-Rx].

9 You can’t grow if you only work each body part once a week.

If you work out — work out intensely– then it can take 5-10 days for the muscles to heal. Although the following should be taken with a grain of salt when determining your own exercise frequency, a study in the May 1993 issue of the Journal of Physiology revealed it can take weeks for muscles to recuperate from an intense workout. The study involved a group of men and women who had worked their forearms to the max. All of the subjects said they were sore two days after exercising, and the soreness was gone by the seventh day, and the swelling was gone by the ninth day. After six weeks, the subjects had only gained back half the strength they had before the original exercise! By no means are we advocating that you wait two months between workouts, but we are trying to prove the point that it takes muscles longer to heal than what you might have previously thought. For some people, especially natural bodybuilders, waiting a week between body part workouts might be just what the doctor ordered for size and strength gains!

10 You can’t make gains if you only train with weights three days a week.

Although you probably couldn’t find a single steroid-assisted athlete who trains only three days a week [well, I was, and I made fantastic gains!], there’s absolutely no reason why a three-day-a-week routine couldn’t work for many natural athletes. As long as your routine attacked the whole body and you worked to failure on each set, you could easily experience great gains on this sort of routine. However, you need to pay even more attention to your diet if you only train three days a week, especially if your job involves little or no physical activity, and you like to spend your idle time eating. Ignore those who say three-day-a-week bodybuilders are only ‘recreational lifters’. Think quality and not quantity.

11 You should only rest 45 seconds in between sets.

That’s true if you’re trying to improve cardiovascular health or lose some bodyfat. But in order to build muscle, you need to allow enough time for the muscle to recuperate fully (ie. let the lactic acid buildup in your muscles dissipate and ATP levels build back up). In order to make muscles grow, you have to lift the heaviest weight possible, thereby allowing the maximum number of muscle fibers to be recruited. If the amount of weight you lift is being limited by the amount of lactic acid left over from the previous set, you’re only testing your ability to battle the effects of lactic acid. In other words, you’re trying to swim across a pool while wearing concrete overshoes. When training heavy, take [at least!] two and three minutes between your sets. Notice I said, “when training heavy.” The truth is, you can’t train heavy all the time. Periodization calls for cycling heavy workouts with less intense training sessions in an effort to keep the body from becoming overtrained. (See ‘Periodization’ by Brad Jeffreys on p. 85 of the Feb/March 1993 issue of MM2K)

12 You have to use fancy weightlifting equipment in order to make the best gains.

Futuristic-looking, complex machinery designed to give your muscles the ‘ultimate workout’ is typically less effective than good-old barbells and dumbbells. Using simple free weights (barbells and dumbbells) on basic multi-joint exercises, like the squat, bench press, shoulder press, and deadlift, is still the most effective means of resistance exercise ever invented. Scientific research has shown that many exercise machines lack the proper eccentric component of an exercise that’s necessary to stimulate muscle tissue to remodel (grow). (See the article titled ‘Research Confirms that Bodybuilders Should Pay Heavy Attention to Negative Reps’ by Bill Phillips on p.18 of the Feb/March issue of MM2K)

13 Weight training makes you big; aerobic exercise cuts you up.

Manipulations in your nutrient intake are the main factor in getting cut up, and how you do it doesn’t matter. If your daily caloric expenditure exceeds your daily caloric intake on a consistent basis, you will lose fat and get more cut.
Aerobic exercise is generally meant to improve cardiovascular efficiency, but if you do it long enough, you will burn up calories and in the long run drop the fat. However, weightlifting can do the same thing, only better. Studies have shown that the body burns far more efficiently if exercise is performed at a moderate pace for periods longer than 20 minutes. (It generally takes that long for the glucose in the bloodstream to be ‘burned up’, causing the body to dip into glycogen reserves for its energy) Once the glycogen reserves are used up, the body must metabolize fatty acids for energy. That equate to lost bodyfat.
In the long run, bodybuilding is more efficient than aerobics for burning up calories. Let me explain–if researchers were to undertake a study of twins whereby one twin performed daily aerobics and the other practiced a bodybuilding programme where the end result was increased lean body mass, the bodybuilding twin would ultimately be a more efficient fat burner than his aerobic twin. Why? Well, by adding lean body mass, that person’s metabolic requirements are higher–muscle uses energy even while it is not being used. The aerobic twin might use more calories during the time period of exercise itself, but the weight-lifting twin would use a higher amount during rest time, leading to a higher net 24-hour expenditure. The weight lifter burns fat just sitting there.

14 You can completely reshape a muscle by doing isolation exercises.

You can’t limit growth to only one area of a muscle. Larry Scott, for whom the ‘biceps peaking’ Scott curl was named, had tremendous biceps, but he didn’t have much of a peak. The shape of your biceps, or for that matter, any muscle, is determined by your genetic makeup. When you work a muscle, any muscle, it works on the all-or-nothing principle, meaning that each muscle fiber recruited to do a lift — along the entire length of that muscle — is contracted fully. Why would a certain number of them, like the ones in the middle of the biceps, suddenly start to grow differently or at a faster rate than its partners? If anything, the muscles that are closest to the insertion points are the most prone to mechanical stress, and you don’t see them get any bigger than the rest of the muscle. If they did, everyone would have proportions like Popeye.
This is true of any muscle, but you’re probably thinking, what about quads? I know that when I do hack squats with my feet together, it tends to give me more sweep in my legs. Sure it does, but the quadriceps are made up of four different main muscles, and doing hacks with your feet together forces the vastus lateralis muscles on the outside of the leg to work harder; consequently, they grow proportionately along their entire length and give the outer quads more sweep.
As further evidence, take a look at a picture of any young professional bodybuilder before he was developed enough to become a pro. He will have virtually the same structural lines as he does today. All that has changed is that his muscles are now bigger.

15 If you get a pump , you’re working the muscles adequately to ensure muscular hypertrophy, or if your muscles are burning, that means you are promoting muscle growth.

A pump, despite what Arnold Schwarzenegger said about it “feeling better than coming”, is nothing more than the muscle becoming engorged with blood from capillary action. It can be achieved easily by curling a soup can fifty times. It by no means equates to the muscular intensity needed to promote growth. The same is true of the coveted ‘burn’ that Hollywood muscleheads advise the public to ‘go for’. A burn is simply an accumulation of lactic acid, a by-product of chemical respiration. You can get a burn by peddling a bicycle or simply extending your arm straight out and moving it in tiny circles [or sitting in a burning fireplace!]. It does not necessarily mean you are promoting muscle growth. For hypertrophy to occur, you have to subject the muscles to high levels of tension, and high tension levels are best induced by heavy weights.

16 If you do hundreds of sit-ups a day, you will eventually achieve a narrow, washboard-type midsection.

There is no such thing as spot-reduction. Doing thousands and thousands of sit-ups will give you tight abdominal muscles, but they will do nothing to rid your midsection of fat. Thigh adductor and abductor movements will give women’s thighs more firmness, but they will do nothing to rid the area of fat, or what is commonly [and erroneously] called cellulite. Nothing will rid the body of fat, unless it is a carefully-orchestrated reduction in your daily energy intake; in other words, if you burn more calories than you ingest (or do that in conjunction with a nutrient partitioning agent. See #8)

17 Training like a powerlifter - deadlifts, heavy squats, bench presses - will make your physique look blocky.

Blockiness, like baldness or a flat chest, is a genetic trait. If you were born blocky, then powerlifting will simply make you a bigger blocky person. The only way to offset a blocky appearance is to give special emphasis to the lats, the outer muscles of the thighs, and to a fat-reducing diet which will keep the midsection as narrow as possible. With these modifications, you will give your body the illusion of a more “aerodynamic” appearance. The truth is, powerlifting exercises are excellent for bodybuilding.

18 High repetitions make your muscles harder and more cut up.

Although there is some evidence to suggest that high repetitions might induce some extra capillary intrusion into a muscle, they will do nothing to make the muscle harder or more cut up. If a completely sedentary person began weightlifting, using either low reps or high reps, he or she would experience a rapid increase in tonus, the degree of muscular contraction that the muscle maintains even when that muscle is relaxed, but that would happen regardless of rep range. The only way that high repetitions would make a muscle more cut up is if, by doing a higher number of reps, your body as a whole was in negative energy balance, and you were burning more calories than you were ingesting. The truth is, heavy weights, lifted for 5-8 reps per set, can build rock-hard muscles. You just have to get the fat off them to see how “hard” they are.

19 Instinctive training is the best way to promote gains.

If bodybuilders followed their instincts, they’d go home and pop open a Bud [much prefer Toohey’s Red myself!]. Instinctive training is a wonderful catch-phrase, and it might even work for drug-assisted athletes since the very act of opening up a Bud would probably induce muscular growth in them. However, in a natural bodybuilder, the approach to long-term, consistent gains in muscular mass has to be, shall we say, a bit more scientific. Research results conducted by exercise physiologists recommend a systematic approach such as the one encompassed by periodization where the bodybuilder, through a period of several weeks, lifts ever-increasing pre-set percentages of a one-rep lift. This heavy period is also periodically staggered with a lighter training phase ‘cycle’. Ultimately, the percentages increase, the maximum one-rep lifts increase, and lean body mass increases. There is nothing instinctive about it.

20 Women need to train differently than men.

On a microscopic level, there is virtually no difference between the muscle tissue of men and the muscle tissue of women. Men and women have different levels of the same hormones, and that’s what is responsible for the difference in the amount of muscle a man can typically put on and the amount of muscle a woman can typically gain. There is absolutely no reason why either should train differently than the other sex, provided they have the same goals. The only difference in training might be as a result of cultural, sexual preferences. A woman might desire to develop her glutes a little more so she looks better in a pair of ‘Guess’ jeans. Conversely, a man might want to build his lats a little more so that he fits the cultural stereotype of a virile man.

21 There are food supplements available that are just as effective as steroids, yet safer.

The only things as effective as steroids are other steroids. Despite the proclamations of some supplement distributors, usually in giant, 35-point type, no currently available supplement works like steroids. However, nutrients and supplements can be extremely effective, especially if your diet is lacking in some critical component or you’re genetically predisposed to accept that nutrient or supplement. Biochemically, individuals vary enormously, and the interaction of genetics, coupled with the widely varying diets that each of us eats, makes it virtually impossible to gauge just what will work for one individual and what won’t. That is why some supplements work better than others for some people, just as some people are genetically predispositioned to accept steroids more readily than others. Food supplements do have benefits that can’t be overlooked — they’re generally safe, and they won’t get you thrown into jail. But none of them build muscle as fast or as well as steroids.

22 Professional bodybuilders represent the epitome of health and fitness.

The ultimate irony is that the IFBB is facing in trying to get bodybuilders into the Olympics is that while every athlete in every other sport is presumably the healthiest they’ve ever been so that they are able to compete athletically and break records, the bodybuilder is so weak on competition day that he or she would have trouble fending off the attacks of an enraged toy poodle. The weeks of constant dieting, workouts that continually tax the body almost beyond recovery, and a constant influx of potentially harmful drugs and diuretics have brought most of them to total exhaustion.
And think about the huge amounts of food some steroid-using bodybuilders eat. In all the longevity sites in the world where people routinely live to be one hundred, the only common denominator is that they all either under-eat or eat just enough to meet their daily caloric requirements. By ingesting less food, they ingest less harmful chemicals, and fewer free radicals are formed in the body. The average professional builder probably eats at least four or five times what these aforementioned people eat. As a result, bodybuilders often suffer from high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Plus, with all that extra mass, the heart has to work that much harder and will probably stop beating years before it was designed to. That’s why professional bodybuilding is the ultimate act of vanity. It was done strictly to fulfill some misguided notion of the superhuman ideal, and health was not even a consideration. Almost without exception, these guys and gals are not healthy, and they’ll probably be among the first to tell you so. However, weight-training and consuming a nutrient-rich diet is very healthy, as long as it is not carried to extremes.

23 Training with weights causes your muscles to get tight and hinders flexibility and, consequently, athletic performance.

If anything, when done properly (slowly and using a complete range of motion), weight training increases flexibility. Many athletes now engage in weight training in order to improve their performance in their chosen sport — witness Evander Hollyfield or any number of track athletes, basketball players, or gymnasts; the list goes on and on.
This lie goes all the way back to the 1930s. Companies that were selling isometric exercise programmes by mail were trying to convince people _not_ to exercise with barbells, simply because it wasn’t practical to send weights through the mail. So they made up the ‘muscle-bound’ lie.
This lie might have been fueled from the feeling of ‘tightness’ that accompanies an intense workout. If the workout was intense and a sufficient number of muscle fibers were recruited and microscopically damaged, then even the normal tonus (the normal amount of contraction experienced by a relaxed muscle) is more than enough to cause a feeling of pain and tightness. The tightness is compounded by the ‘tugging’ of the tendons on the muscles. Stretching, however, would do much to alleviate this tightness, and stretching is a recommended part of any athletic pursuit.
The only possible confirmation of this lie concerns a baseball pitcher’s arm. An intense weight training programme might affect a pitcher’s ability to throw a fast ball, but it wouldn’t be because of a lack of flexibility. The speed a pitcher can generate seems to be determined more by a complex relationship of tendon length and strength and nervous system efficiency as opposed to muscular strength, and weight training could, possibly, upset this delicate balance.

24 Loading up on carbohydrates is an excellent way to enhance your athletic performance.

The traditional manner in which athletes ‘carb up’ for an athletic competition usually involves first depleting the body’s stores of carbohydrates through exercise and diet. This is then followed by rest and a high carbohydrate intake. However, studies have shown that this type of preparation is unnecessary. An athlete who eats a balanced, high-carbohydrate diet and is in reasonably good shape has plenty of carbohydrates in his or her system to meet the demands of short-duration exercises that don’t exceed roughly one hour. Anyone that does exercises that last more than an hour, like long-distance running or cycling, may benefit from ‘carbing up’, but the ability of muscles to use fat as a source of energy rather than carbohydrates in endurance events may be even more important to performance at that level.

25 Consuming foods high in sugar before training provides your body with extra energy to sustain workouts.

Simple sugars like sucrose don’t need to be broken down by the body’s enzymes to be used as energy like complex carbohydrates do. Therefore, they elicit a rapid release of insulin, the hormone that regulates blood-sugar levels. The trouble is, the sudden, rapid influx of sugar into the system causes the body to release insulin in what must be considered a haphazard method, ie. the amount released is usually more than what’s needed to metabolise the sugar. Consequently, your blood sugar often temporarily drops to a point that is actually lower than it was _before_ you had the sugar, which might cause you to become more exhausted much earlier than it normally would. Your body is then forced to dip into its glycogen reserves in order to correct the imbalance.
To ensure that you have enough energy to complete a workout, eat nutrient- rich foods with low glycemic indices (those that elicit a smooth, steady stream of sugar into the bloodstream) like barley, lentils or beans.

26 All anabolic steroids are extremely toxic and dangerous.

Here’s a good trivia question borrowed from Dan Duchaine’s Underground Steroid Handbook [highly recommended]: if you lined up a bottle of Dianabol (a popular steroid), a bottle of Lasix (a diuretic used by heart patients and bodybuilders who want to ‘cut up’ for a competition), a bottle of Valium, a bottle of aspirin, and a bottle of Slow-K (a potassium supplement), which one, upon eating a 100 tablets, wouldn’t kill you? Well, most likely the Dianabol. This isn’t an endorsement of steroids; it’s just an effective illustration of the stigma generally associated with all steroids: ‘they’ll give you brain tumors like Lyle Alzado . . . they’ll cause your heart to enlarge and eventually give out [they cause spontaneous decapitation . .]’. Maybe, but all steroids are different. Some are more dangerous than others. Birth control pills are steroids. Testosterone patches have been used with great success to enhance the quality of life for elderly men. Some of the steroids that bodybuilders use are very mild, and the risk associated with them is virtually negligible. Still, there _are_ dangerous steroids, and that’s all the more reason that athletes who choose to use them must be more knowledgeable about them. This is what Bill Phillips’ Anabolic Reference Guide [_very_ highly- recommended] is all about — education. Of course, the physical changes that steroids bring about might cause adverse psychological effects in the user, and that fact shouldn’t be ignored.

27 If you stop working out, your muscle will turn into fat.

This is almost too preposterous to address. Muscle can no sooner turn to fat than gold can turn into lead. Muscle is made up of individual cells–living, ‘breathing’ cells that undergo all kinds of complex metabolic processes. Fat cells are simply storage packets of lipids. The possibility of one changing into another is akin to the bowling ball in your storage closet turning into your Aunt Edna. If you stop working out, if you stop applying resistance to your muscles on a consistent basis, they will simply adapt to the new condition. In other words, they’ll shrink. If the degree of inactivity or immobilization is severe, the muscles will shrink faster than the surrounding skin, and a temporary condition of loose skin might be experienced, but that too would remedy itself with time.

28 Ingesting MCT (medium-chain triglyceride) oils will give you tons of energy, but they won’t make you fat.

MCTs first gained prominence for treating persons suffering from fat mal- absorption, pancreatic deficiency, or stomach or esophageal diseases. Researchers found that MCTs, because of their better solubility and motility, underwent a rapid hydrolysis by salivary, gastric, and pancreatic enzymes. Consequently, they were able to reach the liver and provide energy much more quickly than long-chain triglycerides (Guillot, et al., 1993). There was also some evidence that MCTs reduced lipid deposition in fat stores compared with that resulting from LCTs under identical energy intake conditions. However, this is no reason to believe that ingesting these oils in excess will not result in a positive energy balance which the body stores as fat. MCTs, like regular oils, like regular fats, have nine calories per gramme. Even though they are metabolized differently, using them in excessive amounts will add inches to your waistline.

29 If everyone took the same amount of steroids, everyone would look like a professional bodybuilder.

One of the ironies of steroid use is that some people are genetically ‘gifted’ in terms of steroid receptors. That means that they have a large number of receptor sites in the muscles with which a particular steroid can combine and exert its mass-building effects. The man or woman who won the last contest might very well have the most active steroid receptors rather than being the most dedicated, knowledgeable bodybuilder. On the other hand, some people might possess very few receptors for a particular steroid. That’s why they experience very little, if any, growth on a particular steroid. Another factor that influences receptor affinity is age. The highest receptor affinity seems to occur in late teenage years. This is a generalization, but it seems to be true for a good number of people. Since there is a greater uptake in these individuals, they are often able to take lower dosages for longer periods of time and make better gains than older users. The truth is, two bodybuilders could take the same steroid stack, train and eat the same, and one could turn out to be in the Olympia, and the other might never even win a local contest. The difference in how people react to these drugs is incredible.

30 Someone with a well-built body must be knowledgeable about fitness and physique development.

Despite popular belief, just because some guy has 20″ [51cm] arms or 30″ [77cm] thighs, that does not automatically credential him as a bodybuilding expert. Unfortunately, in a society where looks count for so much, well-built lifters are often regarded as bodybuilding scientists. The unfortunate fact is, many well-built athletes, even pro bodybuilders, have no idea how they got where they are. Many of them are so genetically gifted and embellish their genetic potential even further by using tons of bodybuilding drugs that they actually succeed in spite of themselves. With few exceptions, elite bodybuilders are the last people in the world you want to turn to for bodybuilding advice if you’re genetically average like 98% of us. You’re more likely to find expert advice from someone who has ‘walked a mile in your shoes’.

Source: October 2000 Muscle Media

Bodybuilding is a fast-growing sport that is building popularity among the average citizens. Everyday more and more people take up the sport as they realize the countless health benefits of weight training and exercise. Thus, what was once considered a pastime in 18th century India became a huge sporting industry with commercial ventures not only in sporting equipment but in bodybuilding supplements as well.

The general myth is that bodybuilding supplements can help muscular development and gain. This belief has led many an athlete “stack� themselves up with bodybuilding supplements, protein drinks, and vitamins just to gain that edge that could catapult them to fame, money, and glory. The truth, however, is that many bodybuilding supplements are untested and some are proven ineffective.

Creatine, however, is one of the few bodybuilding supplements that has been tested and approved as an effective bodybuilding supplement. Even so, creatine only works when taken with a solid nutritional base and when the user is in a weight training program.

Other recommended nutritional bodybuilding supplements are as follows:

Multiple vitamins and minerals. This type of bodybuilding supplement is for overall intake and should be taken both in the mornings and in the evenings.

Essential fatty acids. This is an essential bodybuilding supplement for every bodybuilder. The commonest form of essential fatty acid that every bodybuilder need is the omega-3.

Protein powder. Protein is of course the key to muscle growth and as such, it is the most important bodybuilding supplement to have. Quality of this bodybuilding supplement is defined by yield, amino acid profile (BCAA - EAA ratio), WPI - WPC ratio, filler percentage, taste, ease of use, blending capacity, digestibility, and results.

Vitamin C. This bodybuilding supplement is already included in the multi vitamin but FYI, one to three grams per day is needed.

Vitamin E (400-800 iu which is inclusive of the amount taken in the multi vitamin.)

Glutamine. This is an optional bodybuilding supplement but which can be helpful since it may boost circulation of growth hormones in some people and reinforce immune and brain function. The amino acid that is glutamine also aids in the synthesis of protein and has anti-catabolic properties. Recommended daily dosage would be 5-15 grams.

Acidophilus and/or Fructooligosaccharides (FOS). A bodybuilding supplement that helps improve gastrointestinal health which might be compromised due to excessive intake of protein powders.

Alpha Lipoic Acid is a bodybuilding supplement that functions as a blood sugar regulator and as an antioxidant.

Coenzyme Q-10 is another bodybuilding supplement that can be used as an antioxidant. It is also good for cardiac health and prevention of gum disease.

Green Tea Extract. A major disease-preventive agent, this bodybuilding supplement also has antioxidant and metabolic properties.

Psyllium Husks and/or Flax Seeds. This bodybuilding supplement is a great source of fiber, lignans, protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals.

About the Author: Sam Michaels is a freelance author and body training specialist who writes articles for http://www.BodyBuildingDirect.com

Source: www.isnare.com