Last week I wanted to burst a few bubbles and get readers to critically assess the logic behind their fat loss endeavours, specifically jogging. Understanding the science and the impact that any type of exercise has on your body is crucial to reaching your desired goals.

I am a huge advocate of sprint/interval training. The benefits far outweigh the hard work you invest. Sprint training is a series of short bursts of energy followed by brief periods of recovery. Sprints can be done on grass, in the pool, on a stationary bike or a treadmill. All you need is a little bit of space. Equipment is not necessary. The options are endless as are the benefits. You just have to get out and do it.

For the jogger who has been performing long slow tedious runs, sprints will save you a lot of time. An effective sprinting session can be completed in as little as 15 minutes plus a brief two minute warm up and cool down. You might ask, “How am I going to burn as many fat calories in such a short span of time?” The secret is in the intensity. Logic would suggest that the harder you work, the greater the benefits.  And this is all true. The catch is that it is not the calories that you are burning while you are performing the exercise that count. A typical 15 minute sprint session on a treadmill may burn as few as 150 calories, but the metabolic benefits will last for the next 24 to 48 hours and your metabolism will be on fire for the following 2 to 3 hours upon completion. This is referred to as EPOC or excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. It is the additional calories your body will burn after the exercise session is completed in order to return your body to the state it was in before the exercise took place. So the harder you work, the greater the benefits you will reap over the long haul.

Regardless of what process we are undergoing, our bodies are hardwired to return themselves to homeostasis (balance). In any process our body undergoes whether it be digestion, breathing or muscle repair, our bodies require energy in the form of calories to recover and repair itself. Therefore the greater the stress, the greater the metabolic benefits of the activity and the longer it will take your body to return itself back to the balance it wants. The added benefit of training harder is the potential to build new muscle. Short intense efforts call upon your fast twitch muscle fibres to get the job done. These muscle fibres are highly susceptible to fatigue, but they have the greatest potential for hypertrophy (muscle growth). A great example of this can be seen when observing the physiques of a competitive marathon runner and a competitive sprinter. Sprinters carry less body fat than their long distance counterparts and have a lot more muscle. Sprinters tend to look a lot healthier too. In summation, sprinting offers the benefits of burning fat and building muscle simultaneously. Something that jogging cannot provide.

In Part 3, I will give you specific sprint/interval workouts that you can perform at the gym, in your home or outside, weather permitting.

If you are serious about your health, longevity and staying lean, then you need to read this.

I have always been fascinated by other cultures. I like to learn about their customs, social norms and how they interact with one another. Most recently I have been reading about the diets of different ethnic groups, especially East Asian cultures, primarily in China and Japan.

I am not referring to East Asians who live in North America. Look around and you will see that per capita they have the same potential to be overweight and unhealthy as any North American walking the streets. When they arrive in North America and start eating Double Whoppers with a Coke and fries, all hope is lost, as they too become defenseless.  I am referring to Asians who are born, raised and live in their countries of origin for the long term. It is not a coincidence that the Japanese have the highest life expectancy on the planet and the smallest incidence of disease. Their lifestyle and the foods that they eat are something we need to learn and follow, to improve our longevity and quality of life.

1. Wild caught fish is a staple in the East Asian diet. They eat it almost daily. The benefit being that their diets are extremely high in omega-3 fatty acids which gives their bodies the DHA and EPA needed to prevent inflammation and disease from occurring. North Americans eat very little fish. The majority of the fish that we do eat comes from fish farms and has much less protein and even less omega-3’s. In order to ward off inflammation in the body we need to have the right ratio of omega-6 to 3 fatty acids.  Dozens of studies have linked the high omega-6 to 3 ratio in farmed fish with higher risks of disease and inflammation.

2. Whether you buy into the gluten free hype or not, eating an abundance of wheat is not in your best interest. East Asian cultures eat next to none. Flour is used in incremental amounts and the noodles that they eat are egg and rice based. While I don’t view rice to be a “health food”, I consider it neutral. Rice is both very easy on the digestive tract and it’s hypo-allergenic.

3. Digestion is very important in East Asian cultures. That is why they eat at a snail’s pace. They may start off with some tea an hour or so before the main course to prepare the stomach for digestion. Different dishes may be consumed one at a time as they are prepared. They take their time and enjoy their food. Eating until one is stuffed is not encouraged.

4. East Asians use a lot of different herbs and spices. Turmeric, rosemary, garlic, thyme and cumin to name a few; all have a number of health benefits. They have been shown to increase metabolism, reduce inflammation, blood pressure, cholesterol and improve digestion.

5. They perform more labour intensive work than any other cultures. In their leisure time they are outdoors walking and riding their bikes. While on the other hand, North Americans sit more and perform less physical activity than any other cultures.

6. They eat a lot of fermented food. The fermentation process removes plant defenses (toxic properties) and adds healthy bacteria to the food, which improves gut health. The most common fermented foods are soybeans, cabbage and tea. Eating these types of fermented foods is much better than the North American alternative of taking probiotic pills to heal the digestive tract.

Why is in-home personal training better than going to a commercial gym or studio? Because it gets results. I see it all the time and you can too. Here’s why…

When I first decided to become a personal trainer 15 years ago, most of my peers worked in local gyms. It took me less than a month working in a neighbourhood studio to realize that this was not what I wanted to do. That now defunct studio, like many others, was geared towards generating revenue above all else. Customer service and getting results for clients was a distant second. Most personal trainers I know are in it because they love what they do and they want to help people achieve their goals. One night at the studio, a client approached me after a session and asked if I would train her and her daughter in their home. Soon after, I left the studio and started an in-home training business. I have never looked back.

Here is my view on the benefits of in-home personal training:

Accountability – It’s pretty easy to talk yourself out of a trip to the gym. Ask any gym goer and they will tell you that they are guilty of this from time to time. But when you know that your trainer will be showing up at your door for 8:00 a.m. sharp, all excuses are out the window. You have to be ready to perform. Scheduled appointments help you maintain consistency, which is critical to being successful in accomplishing your fitness goals, whether they be gaining muscle, losing fat or overall conditioning. You need to train a minimum of three times a week to see a difference and your trainer plays a major role in keeping you on track.

One-on-one interaction – In-home personal training gives you one-on-one attention from a trainer without distractions. You get a fitness program that is tailored just for you and works around your limitations to help you reach your fitness goals quickly and efficiently.  You are the centre of attention. The personal training at a gym or boot camp is usually standardized and variations are discouraged.

Time efficient – When you have a trainer come to your home you save a lot of preparation time. There’s no need to pack a bag with your clothing and gear, no travelling to the gym, no searching for a parking spot. Your trainer should arrive at the scheduled time, and spend the entire training session with you, without distraction. When time is of the essence, in home-training allows you to spend more time training and less time dealing with all the minutiae.

Privacy – We all feel that our bodies are less than perfect. Working out in a public facility can be pretty intimidating, especially when you are out of shape and surrounded by people who aren’t.  An in-home personal training program lets you work out in the comfort of your own home without judgement. You get to exercise without an audience and learn how to perform the exercises at your own pace.

Minimal exercise equipment – Most in home personal training focuses on exercise techniques that require little or no gear. If you already own fitness equipment, your trainer can include it in your workouts. If you don’t have any, most trainers have equipment that they can bring. I recommend that my clients have a yoga mat, a stability ball and a pair of dumbbells. It’s easy to take them to your office, to a hotel or to use them in your backyard. The idea that you need a bunch of fancy machines, bikes and treadmills in your basement in order to get in shape is unfounded. You should be able to train almost anywhere and get an effective workout.

Let me make this abundantly clear, everyone should be performing some type of resistance training. Whether you are using weights, kettlebells, bands or your own body weight, everyone needs to put pressure on their joints and do so as often as possible. Sitting on the couch or at an office chair for prolonged periods of time is taking the fast track to obesity, osteoporosis and arthritis. To maintain bone density and muscle mass over the long haul, a significant amount of pressure must be placed upon joints and their connective tissues.

I have trained a large number of clients over the past 16 years, both male and female, with ages ranging from 12 to 85. I probably train more women than men and I have found that in order to work effectively with some women, there are several false beliefs that first must be addressed before we can develop an effective training program that they can comfortably accept.

These are the most common statements I hear:

1. I just want to tone. The word toning should be saved for describing the intonation in one’s voice. It has no place when it comes to training. You either add muscle or you lose it. It is physically impossible to shape a muscle. That shape is already genetically predetermined.
2. I don’t want to get too bulky. Women do not produce enough natural testosterone to build the same amount of muscle as a man. It is just not possible. Unless you are eating copious amounts of high quality calories and strength training a minimum of 5 days a week with extremely heavy weights while sticking a needle in your butt once a month, you have nothing to worry about. When a woman tells me that her legs get bulky when she squats, my response is that she needs to get leaner. “Bulk” is simply muscle covered with a bunch of fat. A pound of fat takes up three times the surface area of a pound of muscle. So get rid of the fat and add some muscle and you will be surprised at how sleek you will actually look, and your clothes will fit better too. Don’t kid yourself, Jessica Biel didn’t build up her backside by spending hours and hours on a stationary bike. She did it by squatting and deadlifting. Nobody wants a posterior that resembles a pancake.
3. I just want to do cardio. Performing cardiovascular exercise is not the best overall method for fat loss. Resistance training speeds up your metabolism both in the short and in the long term. For every pound of muscle you can add to your frame you will burn an extra 50 calories a day. Add 5 pounds of muscle and you can eat an extra 250 calories a day!!! Even if you are training for an endurance event, resistance training will improve your overall aerobic performance and help prevent injury by strengthening your joints and connective tissues.
4. I just want to get lean and have a six pack. For a lot of women, being exceptionally lean (under 12% body fat) has extreme hormonal effects on the body. Those women that you see on the front of fitness magazines don’t stay that lean year round. They dramatically cut back on their carbohydrate and sodium intake 4 to 6 weeks before a shoot and become very dehydrated. I don’t recommend it. If you want to see your abs, by all means, go for it. But remember, every person has a different set of genes. What might take your girlfriend six weeks to accomplish, could take you six months or more.
5. Women and men should train differently. I am not quite sure what “training like a man” or “training like a woman” means. Are certain exercises inherently geared towards one gender? Men and women may have specific goals they are looking to accomplish, but it is possible to achieve them both with the same programs. Men tell me that they want to look jacked or ripped and women want to be lean and shapely. The fact is you can’t have any real shape without building muscle first and to build muscle you need to lift weights. I am not talking about doing countless sets with 3 pound dumbbells. You need to lift weights that challenge your muscles in the 6 to 15 repetition range for multiple sets. Once that gets too easy, you need to add more resistance. Women produce 10 times less testosterone than men do. So if anything, they need to work more intensely than their male counterparts, not less.

Here is a simple exercise you can perform to build up your butt and hamstrings that will give you some shape back there……:)

How would you like to fill out your jeans in all the right places?

In order for that to happen you need to start training your legs and you need to train them with intensity. I am referring to the posterior chain (hamstrings, hips, lower back and glutes). They are the most neglected muscles in the human body. There are precious few of us born with a rear end you can bounce quarters off; there are a lot more of us with a pancake for an ass and a matching set of hamstrings.

Besides looking fantastic when fully developed, your hamstrings and glutes are extremely important from a functional standpoint. I can’t begin to tell you how many people I’ve known over the years who have suffered from debilitating back pain, myself included. The one common denominator that we all had was an underdeveloped posterior chain. I have yet to see someone at a healthy body weight with a well-developed posterior who suffers from back pain. It just doesn’t happen.

Most of us have jobs where we are sitting all day. Because of the seated position the thighs and hips get very tight, which inhibits the glutes. The glutes forget their primary role which is to stabilize the hips.  So when the glutes become inhibited, the posterior chain is not firing on all cylinders. What happens next is that the lower back has to take on the work of the glutes and hamstrings, and while they are being overworked, a whole host of other muscles assume new responsibilities that they were not meant to perform. This leads to a cascade of lower back, hip, knee, ankle, and foot problems. What we have is a trickle-down effect. Our muscles and joints will always pick up the slack for those that are lagging behind. That is how the body works.

The second reason the posterior chain is neglected is that you don’t see these muscles in the mirror. We have a gross tendency to focus on those muscles that are more visible to us, such as the chest, abs, biceps and quadriceps (thigh muscles). If you can’t see them without straining your neck, what’s the point, right? Of course everyone who is behind you can see them.

Our bodies need to be in balance. That way they look great and we are bulletproofing them from injury. It is a win-win and you can accomplish this while exercising at home.

The two videos below are the Single Leg Hip Raise and the Romanian Deadlift. They are great exercises that you can perform at home. Both movements work the lower back, hips, glutes and hamstrings and that is a lot of muscle. I recommend that you train each movement at a high volume (3 to 5 sets of 12 to 15 repetitions).

You can perform the Single Leg Hip Raise daily to strengthen those weak underdeveloped parts.

I suggest performing the Romanian Deadlift no more than 2 to 3 times per week.

What is proper nutrition for your body?

Over the years we have become more and more passionate and guarded about what we eat and what category our foods come from.  As a child and even as a teenager, when I sat down at the dinner table I ate what was put in front of me. I didn’t worry about whether it was a grain, a legume or a vegetable. I was hungry, so I ate.

Food is one thing we can have complete control over. Nobody can force us to put something in our mouths that we don’t want to. So when we have these moments in our lives where we are feeling a lack of control, having the freedom to choose what we are going to eat brings us a sense of control and comfort. The problem is that we have taken it too far. The difference between now and 10 or 15 years ago is that the Internet is littered with food advocates who heavily publicize their platforms in order to sell cookbooks, e-books, website subscriptions and the like. So trying to educate yourself by reading whatever you can get your hands on, often does more harm than good.

Today, we have vegan groups telling us that we will die of coronary disease within a year if we eat meat. There are the gluten free people, many of whom have no idea why they are gluten free or what gluten even is (gluten is a protein found in most grains). And there are those who have sworn off dairy completely because they experience stomach upset from time to time after a bowl of high-sugar fat-free yogurt. I could google any food in existence and find a blog post telling me why I should eat it and another one telling me the exact opposite. Imagine reading an article advocating why you need to avoid apples. Trust me, they are out there. If we followed everything we read on the Internet, we would be left sucking on ice cubes all day long.

I never tell anyone what to eat. We are all so different—how could I know your biology? When someone asks me what they should eat, I make 4 easy-to-follow suggestions for proper nutrition:

1. Stay the hell away from processed foods. They really aren’t foods, they are food by-products. You will find them in boxes in the aisles of your grocery store and most of them come with no real expiry date. Meaning that they are dead and offer you zero nutritional benefits.
2. Eat whole foods. That means foods in their original form, fat and all.
3. Eat seasonal fruits and vegetables and leave the V8 and fruit juices on the shelves.
4. Probably the most important suggestion is to trust your body. When you eat something, gauge how you feel an hour later. Are you invigorated? Full of energy? Or do you feel fatigued, light headed and sleepy? After going through this exercise several times with the same foods you will have a much better idea which ones agree with you and which ones don’t. Start thinking for yourself and use practical experience as your guide.

If you want more muscle growth, you need to be in it for the long term.

Most of the members at my local gym are high school and university students. Strength training has become more and more popular with the younger demographic over the past 20 years. In the 70’s, strength training was more of a subculture—men and women weren’t walking around with slabs of beef on their frames. Take a look at some old NBA footage on YouTube; athletes had significantly smaller frames back then. Today, strength training has become part of the mainstream; it is no longer a circus side show.

The kids in my gym want to get bigger and stronger as fast as they can. The majority of them use muscle building supplements, some use steroids, but what 90% of them have in common is that they over-train. My immediate advice to anyone with this mindset is to take a step back. If you think spending 6 days a week 3 hours a day in the gym is going to get you the results you want, think again. The musculoskeletal and central nervous systems of the human body can only take so much stress before they break down. Some bodies can handle more volume and intensity than others, but eventually even those with the best muscle-building genetics will fall victim to overuse injuries.

Mindset is everything. When you are truly committed to accomplishing a goal, whether it be inside or outside the gym, you need to be in it for the long haul. I have observed that the men and women who are in the best shape are not usually in their 20’s. Younger people tend to take their bodies for granted. It is people in their 30’s and 40’s. Their foundation was built in their younger years, but they have made a lifetime commitment to health and fitness. They train 3 to 4 days a week and their sessions last no more than an hour.

Below, I have outlined some rules for you to follow. They will keep you in the game long term so you can accomplish all your goals. You just won’t get there overnight.

If your schedule allows it, start training early in the day. You’ll increase your metabolic rate over the course of the entire day, as well as increase your nutrient uptake for a greater time period compared to working out in the afternoon or evening.  You’ll have the rest of the day to utilize the majority of your daily protein intake, which means more muscle and less fat.

Put as much effort into your recovery as you put into your training sessions. Inflammation plays a critical role in immune system function and muscle growth. Inflammation needs to be dealt with. You can accomplish this through adequate sleep (no less than 8 hours per night), getting the right nutrition, and keeping your fluid intake high. If you have the means I highly recommend seeing an active release therapy practitioner or massage therapist once a week. If money is an issue, buy a foam roller and use it !

Make small changes to your program every few weeks. Eventually your body will adapt to the same movement patterns and you will need to change things up if you want to avoid overuse injuries. Switching from barbells to dumbbells, grip width or rep ranges will be sufficient.

Avoid all new fads and gimmicks you see on the Internet. The magic pills, fat burning belts and new testosterone enhancing products need to be avoided. Companies need to come up with new marketing ploys in order to sell you their products and they are more than happy to tell you whatever they think you want to hear. Stick with high quality food and hard work instead.

Don’t go 100% all the time. Training like somebody is holding a gun to your head on every last rep is not the way to go. If you train like that every day you will feel like crap and you will end up getting injured. You should always leave a little bit in the tank. A set of squats ends for me as soon as I see my form start to slip. Don’t make the mistake of waiting until you get pinned beneath a barbell to complete your set.

Anyone who has been on a fat loss diet will tell you that although things may start out with a bang, after the first week they tend to fizzle out quickly. They lose 5 lbs the first week, and if they are lucky they will lose another 5 lbs over the next 4 weeks. It is discouraging and it has caused a great many fat loss seekers to throw in the towel before they even got started.

The reason for this is a hormone called leptin. Leptin controls the rate at which you lose fat. When leptin levels are high you can lose fat at a rapid pace; when leptin levels are low, fat loss slows to a snail’s pace. When your body is in a caloric deficit, leptin levels drop. When you increase your leptin levels, fat loss picks up again.

This is where a little planned indulgence comes in. I’m not suggesting you hit every station at the Chinese buffet or enter a hot dog eating contest any time soon. What I’m proposing is that you go out once a week and eat what you want. Make sure you are good and full, but don’t stuff yourself. Having a cheat meal can actually help you lose fat. A major factor affecting leptin levels is your energy intake. What overfeeding does is increase your leptin levels so you can start losing fat again.

A periodic bump in leptin levels has been shown to increase thyroid output, energy expenditure and your basal metabolic rate. This response is augmented to an even greater extent when your body has been in a caloric deficit. When in a caloric deficit, your body produces less of the thyroid hormones T3 and T4. Both of these hormones play a significant role in regulating your metabolic rate. Increasing your calories in a small window will cause your body to speed up your basal metabolic rate over a 24-hour period. A number of studies have shown increases as high as 10%. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

With the Christmas holidays on the way, this would be the perfect time to check out this approach. Go to your work party and indulge in some wine, hors d’oeuvres, desserts and make sure to save some room for the main course too. One word of caution: Do not let this indulgence carry on to the next day. Once you are done, you are done. No more indulgences for another 7 days. If you are one of those people who can’t stop once they start indulging, you need to be careful. Stay away from foods that have a tendency to induce cravings, such as sugars and refined starches. Instead, have an extra serving of meat and potatoes with dinner and throw in some extra fruit for dessert. It may not sound as appealing as a pepperoni pizza with a bowl of ice cream for dessert, but you will still achieve the desired effect (increasing leptin levels) with the healthier option. So if your goal is fat loss, give this a try and let me know it goes.

Abs have long been considered the “Holy Grail” of fitness. If you are on social media, you are likely bombarded with images promoting flat stomachs and washboard abs. It is considered a symbol of strength, health and sexual appeal. Getting to that point where you can see them is as much a function of having a low bodyfat percentage as it is to having well developed muscles under there. You can have world class abs, but if you have a layer of blubber hanging over your waistline, no amount of crunches will bring them out. What will do it is a minimum of 3 weight training sessions a week consisting primarily of compound movements, 2 to 3 sprint/interval sessions, moderate caloric restriction, ample sleep and minimal stress.  For men, you are looking at a body fat percentage of < 10% before you really start seeing them; for women, closer to 15%.

A number of women genetically can’t or voluntarily don’t develop a 6 pack as the very low body fat percentages required to show this level of definition are extremely difficult to reach and can have negative side effects if maintained long term (e.g., malnourishment, altered menstrual cycles). This is why most very lean women will develop three vertical lines of definition running down the middle and both sides of their stomach. It is a much healthier alternative and it looks great. Men can get much leaner without experiencing the negative health side effects that women do. Regardless of your gender, I would strongly caution against restricting your calories below 500 kcal of what your typical daily intake would be. You should keep your metabolism high and your hormone balance in check. Severe calorie restriction will slow down your metabolism and lower testosterone. You are much better off keeping your calories at a reasonable level and upping the intensity of your training to promote fat loss.

Once you are lean enough, here are two great exercises you can do at home that will bring your abs to the surface. I like both of these exercises because they place a tremendous amount of stress on your abdominal wall, while your spine maintains a neutral position throughout each movement. They are much safer than any crunch or sit-up variation where your spine is forced to flex. Flexing places a substantial amount of pressure on your discs and sets you up for injury.

The first exercise you can do at home is called “Stir the Pot”. Make sure you have mastered the front plank before tackling this one.

The second exercise you can do at home is the “Stability Ball Roll Out”. You can also perform this exercise with an ab roller or a barbell with a plate on each side.

It is important to remember that we are all genetically different. There is a small percentage of people who can eat whatever they like and walk around with a six pack, year round. Then there are those who are genetically predisposed to being overweight and although they can keep their body fat levels in a healthy range through diet and exercise, their genetics will impede them from ever seeing their abs. The remaining 80% of us can get there, but only through hard work and sacrifice.

Bulls are enraged by the colour red; don’t go outside with a wet head or you’ll get sick; high cholesterol causes heart disease. Many of us view these statements as dogma. The fact is, not one of these statements has ever been proven and there is very little anecdotal evidence to support any of them. Don’t always believe what you read. Be discerning, do your research, then take what you like and leave the rest. When it comes to strength training, there is more misinformation out there than you can shake a stick at. I don’t have all the answers, but I have a pretty good idea about what works and what doesn’t. Below is a list of myths that really need to be cleared up. If you subscribe to any of these, I can guarantee they are holding you back.

“You need to train for at least an hour to get an effective workout.” The fact is, if you are training for longer than an hour, you are not working hard enough. Peak testosterone levels are reached by the 30 minute mark of a training session and they drop dramatically from there. Some of the best sessions I have had lasted less than half an hour, when I was strapped for time. Unless you are training with heavy loads (1 to 5 rep range) that require 3 minutes of rest between sets in order to recover, keep your rest periods brief (30 to 60 seconds). Always focus on quality over quantity.

“Machines are safer than free weights.” Machines may be easier, but I am not sure about safer. If I have a knee injury, the idea of getting locked into a fixed range of motion on a leg extension doesn’t sound like a very good idea to me. I am better off performing a goblet squat and using a dumbbell for added resistance. It allows me to control the path so my joints can move freely.

“If you want to get big and strong you need to be in the gym every day.” No you don’t.  You need to rest and recover. Muscles don’t grow in the gym, they grow when you are not in the gym. Focus on getting 3 to 5 training sessions in a week depending on how much discretionary time you have. On off-days you can go for a walk, swim or practice yoga. These are referred to as active recovery days and I highly recommend them.

“You don’t need to train with heavy weights to build muscle.” Yes you do. Heavy weights is a relative term. For a female who is a novice trainee, pressing 20 lb dumbbells over her head for 6 to 12 repetitions constitutes “heavy weights”. If you want to put a significant amount of muscle on your frame you need to get strong in these rep ranges with compound multi-joint movements. Light weight isolation exercises (single joint movements) will not activate anywhere near enough muscle fibres to get the job done.

“Make sure you train to get a pump.” A pump is built up by the blood in your muscles and will usually occur after you repeat set after set, which results in a burning sensation known as lactic acid. Lactic acid forms in the absence of oxygen. Lactic acid is a waste product and it does nothing to build muscle. if you are lifting heavy weights and getting a pump, this is an indication that you are making the muscle fibres work. I would only use the pump as an indicator to reveal how well you are activating the working muscle, but not as a sign of success.