If you just don’t know how to start, or you’re between plans and don’t know what to do next… use this whole-body plan three times a week and follow with a little steady-state cardio. You’ll find this workout efficient and effective – and it won’t bore you to tears!

And nary a kickback in sight. (more…)

High Intensity Interval Foreplay

- How to get yourself excited for the main event.

MariAnne Anderson, BSc, MSc(B),
with thanks to Tyron Piteau, B.H.K., R.K., C.H.E.K. Practitioner Level 2
http://www.makersbody.com

Have you ever stood by the microwave, watching a trickle of electronic seconds count down the arrival of improperly warmed food; wondering how much time you’ve wasted watching timers steal individual seconds from your life? Well, I feel the same way about the timer on the treadmill.

In the world of physique enhancement, high intensity interval training (HIIT) is gaining popularity over the old-school “twice-a-day, steady-state” cardio sessions that once dominated pre-contest prep.

Not only is HIIT less boring than watching your life being stolen from you one unpleasant second at a time, interval training is more effective at targeting subcutaneous fat stores while sparing lean mass – something that gains significance the deeper you are into your cut.

Although many athletes use sprint intervals as part of our conditioning, it’s a relative newcomer to “mainstream” fitness; outside of bodybuilding or athletics, not THAT many people do it, and fewer still really know how to prepare for an activity that switches rapidly from eccentric to concentric contraction. Perhaps more for this than for any other type of activity, proper warmup and stretching is key to both optimal performance and injury prevention. (more…)

I’m fiddling with an interesting cardio protocol I read about earlier this year. In a nutshell, it’s 8-second sprints with 12-second recovery periods. I’m nicknaming it “8 seconds of glory” and you build up to doing these 20-second cycles for 15 minutes in total. I started with three. I’m at eight right now. Trust me, by the 6th minute, you hate your life.

Method:
Set up on an upright or recumbent bike (I prefer recumbent for the quad pump, plus it’s easier on my back but either is fine) and start pedaling at a tension that you COULD keep up for at least 20 minutes. Start watching the clock.

1. When it hits the 20-second mark, pedal like mad for 8 seconds
   Then pedal as slowly as you like for 12 seconds.
2. Repeat as many times as you can. I would suggest 3 minutes if you’re in reasonable shape. Build it up to as many as 10 minutes of these little intervals.
3. Cool down for the rest of your 20-minute session. In other words, if you warmed up for a minute, then did 3 minutes of intervals (ie 9 complete 20-second cycles), you have used up 4 minutes – spin it out at a moderate intensity for 16 more minutes. As you do more intervals, your cool-down gets shorter, until you are doing 10 minutes of each. At this point, increase the tension on the bicycle to make the interval work harder rather than doing more and more intervals, k?

Observations:
It’s clearly a variant of HIIT, and one of the problems inherent in HIIT was demonstrated by Romijn, Coyle, Sidossis, Zhang and Wolfe: 5 minutes after high intensity cardio there’s an overshoot of blood FFA levels, probably from a removal of the inhibition of release. This is because anything over about 8 seconds involves going beyond ATP for energy, and that means lactate.

I’ll explain where I’m going with this: (more…)

Okay, so I wanted to call this “the Skinny on Fats” – but it’s SOooooo cheesy! (Okay, and it’s been done. A lot.)

Undaunted, I tossed around some other possibilities:

‘Grease – The Untold Story,” Rejected. Too “Olivia Newton-John.”

Continuing, I tried “Hey Fatty” – but it somehow just didn’t convey my usual academic style.

So I’ll settle on “Mmmmm fat!” (more…)

As we enter into this, the month of the New Year’s resolution, a common question that hits the boards is “how much cardio should I do to lose this gut/ass” (depending on your particular assignment of X and Y chromosomes).

To anyone who knows me, the thought that my lazy, cardio-hating ass would actually sit down and WRITE about this most … unpleasant of activities, bear with me – this profound distaste has fuelled my attempt to find a way to optimize physique goals while doing as little cardio as humanly possible.

In spite of my deeplfy-rooted loathing for this type of activity, I am gradually learning to respect some of the benefits targeted amounts of it can do – not only for fat burning, but also for muscle growth (gasp!). (1) (2) (more…)

This is a push-pull split that divides back workouts into vertical and horizontal planes, and hits legs twice a week with two separate workouts. This was inspired from a conversation I had with Erik Ledin a while back, and is based on principals outlined by Ian King in his book “Get Buffed!” http://www.getbuffed.net/, with rep-ranges that are well described by Thibaudeau.

(more…)