Category Archives: PFUNDAMENTALS
This will be the area where I’ll share training principles and all the diet and exercise fundamentals. I’ll also be adding trainer tips for the pros. Subscribe to check them out!
Beginner’s HIIT Workout
Whether you’ve never done a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout before, or you are a pro, here is a workout I put together for DualFit that is designed for beginners – but can be adjusted in intensity by simply adjusting the intervals.
OTHER INTERVALS TO TRY:
- 30/30: 30 Seconds of Exercise & 30 Seconds of Rest
- 30/30/30: 30 Seconds of the 1st Exercise ( no rest), 30 Seconds of the 2nd Exercise and 30 Seconds rest
- 45/15: 45 Seconds of Exercise & 15 Seconds of Rest
- 50/10: 50 Seconds of Exercise & 10 Seconds of Rest
CLICK HERE to get the written workout, and get more great info at DualFit.com!
re·bound verb \ˈrē-ˌbau̇nd, ri-ˈ\
Rebound: Return, bounce back, setback, backfire, move backward.
I recently took 18 competitors from my gym, Max Fitness, to compete in the NPC Southeast Classic. The goal was hitting the stage. Not winning a trophy, but using the stage to make us push harder and be our best.
The goal was made, and the goal was met! What we do now defines what we learned on our journey to accomplish our goal. In the “realm” of goal acquisition, focusing solely on the goal can be a tragedy. What I mean is, the goal is just that: “a goal” – a means to an end. How we develop, the wisdom we gain, and the way we develop along the way is the real reward for meeting our goal. Goals are not the real rewards.
Lets think backwards for a second. By creating a goal to shoot for, you are inviting some level of adversity into your life. How much adversity we will endure is measured by how grandiose the goal. The “Goal” only gives reason to validate and hold accountable our hard work, our long suffering, our perilous effort to make our bodies fitter, our will stronger, our bellies hungrier. I have never seen anyone train harder than when they were stretching themselves to reach a new goal. These guys did just that. Josh Gay‘s 60-day before & after picture shows just how hard they worked. Then, they hit the stage, and celebrated, and then they went home…
Score! Now What?
What happens after we reach our goal? It is good after hard training to back down, enjoy the “win” and celebrate the goal acquisition. For me, it was going on a vacation (cruise). We hit the keys, then Mexico and then headed to Disney shortly after we got home. Yes, there was a lot of food involved. But, at some point, we must get back in the game.
We don’t pay off credit cards just to go on some huge spending spree waisting our money, discipline and hard work. It is ok to go charge a dinner, but then we pay it off immediately to avoid getting in the bad position we were once in. Whether the goal was physical or financial, it’s important to remember what you learned along the way and how you felt while you were working so hard.
The best way to prevent rebound is to give yourself a marked amount of time to enjoy your hard work. But after that time is finished, it’s time get back to work. It’s time to make new goals – both long and short term.
Before you even reached this goal, you should already dream about what is next. Don’t take your eye off of the immediate prize. Don’t focus on your future goals until you accomplished the one set right before you. However; you should already be thinking about what is next. This will prevent your downtime from turning into a complete train wreck and a complete rebound.
Doesn’t matter if we are talking about finance or weight loss, enjoy your success but don’t throw away your investment. Remember what you learned along the way. This is what makes you better, stronger, and more patient. Make some goals, so you can push your limits!
Geared Up & Ready
Even something like a new pair of shoes can get you motivated to get back in the gym and hit it hard again. I got these new Reebok ZigCarbons and love them. It was just what I needed to want to do cardio again.
My next new gym toy is Reebok’s Bose Headphone set. They help get my mind focused, shut out distractions and make the most of my time at the gym. Totally what I needed to tune back into my routine.
FitFluential LLC compensated me for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Formula for Success
“If you take your eyes off the goal, for even a second, doubt will rush your mind like a band of brutal thieves.”
Doubt intends to kill your dreams, destroy your desire, and beat you down with fear. Evidence of this is obvious in the most trying times. When we are hungry, when we are tired, when we are angry, when we are in despair…
Be Hungry
When you are hungry, let that hunger be your purpose. It is a burning reminder in your gut of what you want to accomplish. When you are tired and your eyes grow heavy, don’t be the martyr the world excuses you to be, no one owes you anything. If there is something you want, you stay up one more hour and you go out and get it!
Be Productive
Anger?, rage? Make it productive, and focus the intensity of this moment into success instead of resentment. No one can control your emotions but you. And when you are in complete despair — Stop. Shhhhh. Be still, and listen. You are more than “just being”. You have the potential to be even more than your desires. You have the ability to accomplish things you havent even dreamed of …yet.
One of my favorite quotes of all time comes by way of the late Henry Ford. He reminds us that we can decide what happens next… he said “he who thinks he can, and he who thinks he can’t, are usually both right“.
Go Beyond
“Attaining the goal isn’t success. Success is found in the pursuit, attaining your goals is the icing on this cake we call life.”
Lastly, it isn’t enough to just dream. I love visualization. Wondering what if, thinking just maybe… Hoping, even praying, for that desire of your heart. Instead of praying for “the goal”, pray for the opportunity to make a way for your goal. The satisfaction of accomplishment comes in the effort – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the years, in pursuit of the “goal”. Attaining the goal isn’t success. Success is found in the pursuit, attaining your goals is the icing on this cake we call life.
“Vision without execution is just hallucination” Henry Ford
FitFluential LLC compensated me for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. #LiveWithFire
Sculpting Better Legs: Simple Leg Workout to Improve Your “Sweep”
If you have been following this mess I call a blog at all for the last 5 months you may have heard me whine and whine about my knee. If not, you’re in luck because here I go again. 5 months ago I was getting ready for my first ever MMA tournament. I know,… shut it! But anywho, I was gonna try. Here’s a shocker: my 42-year-old butt got tore up by a 19-year-old monster. I tore my medial meniscus and sustained a 90% tear to my MCL. I was devastated, but now I’m back and I want to not only return to competing, I want my quads bigger and stronger than ever. The area I want to focus on for this workout is the Vastus Lateralis, the largest and most outer portion of the thigh.
How to Improve Your Sweep
How do we isolate out the vastus lateralis muscle, or as we call it in the physique world, “the sweep”? Vastus externus or vastus lateralis, depending on your A&P professor, is the largest of all the quadricep muscles. The action of this muscle is to extend the tibia or shin bone at the knee, but I’m here to help you learn how to perform knee extension to isolate out the other muscles that synergistically aid in this action. In sculpting, it is very important that we learn isolation. Whether we are a bodybuilder, a bikini competitor or a stay-at-home mom that wants to scult their body, we can all use these principles to learn to sculpt nicer legs.
Target Training
Fat burn or spot reducing fat can not be limited to specific areas of the body, no matter what ”bogus science” and pills tell you. However, sculpting most assuredly can be reduced to a single area, action, and in some cases, specific fibers of a specific muscle – all based on how we execute the exercise. You don’t need a degree in kinesiology to learn these principals, just a little common sense is all.
So, how do we excite and fatigue the fibers of our outer quad to hypertrophy our SWEEP?
Narrow-minded
Ok, so here is one exercise you should be narrow-minded about. Narrow is better when we talk about our stance to accentuate or facilitate the contractile tissue of the outer quad. So lets think narrow when doing squats and leg extensions. Whatever exercises you do, stand with a more narrow stance (feet together). You may stop and ask, does that mean if I stand wide, I will work my inner thigh and medial quads? Yeppers! Now you are getting it. (another blog perhaps) Moving on…
Self-Centered
With leg extensions, it’s all about being self-centered – literally. If you point your toes outward, you are working the vastus medialis, the tear drop shaped muscle on the medial side (inside) of the legs close to the knee. Since we want to work the opposite side of the legs, then (yes, you guessed it) we want to point our toes in the opposite direction, pointing toes together. Note: this doesn’t work by just pointing the feet from the ankle down, the whole leg must internally rotate to the center to excite the appropriate muscles.
Here is an example of my own leg workout where I use these same principles to improve my sweep.
Yesterday’s Leg Workout
Warm up: 4 sets / 20 reps
Deep weighted walking lunges (35-50 pound dumbbells) 45 seconds rest btw sets
Couplet: Leg Press & Leg Extension Super Set
(zero rest between super set, 1 minute between sets)
#1 Heavy leg press
5-8 plates each side, narrow stance (4″ apart) and push only on your heels
10 sets / 15 reps
#2 Moderately heavy leg extension
Moderately heavy leg extension (130lbs-160lbs) internally rotate your femur’s in (toes are pigeon-toed), and squeeze your outer quad in terminal extension.
10 sets / 12-15 reps
Repeat Super Set 10 Times
Puke and repeat for 10 rounds(sets) with 1 minute rest between (rounds) sets
Here are some pics from my last show, the Daytona Classic, just 10 days after getting hurt.
How to Get Perfect Abs
I love fundamentals. Fundamentals are the foundation from which more complex and effective derivatives are built upon. So many pro athletes achieve stardom and fame only to eventually fall into a slump and return to the basics. Many coaches and athletes alike will tell you, if you perfect the fundamentals, there may be no need for much else.
My Striking, and grappling skills are continuing to get better. As I get more advanced, I’ve noticed that every class starts with repeating basic drills that I learned from the very first day; and so it is with abdominal work.
You can do V-ups, X-ups, sit ups, roll ups, knee ups, or just about any abdominal exercise you want, and without using basic fundamentals, you will never effectively work the target area. Most ineffective abdominal work is caused from poor set up. If you can accomplish a good starting position and maintain good positioning during the range, your abs will cry sweaty tears of bliss. So, how do we set up to get all the “goody” out of our abdominal training? glad you asked!
1. Lay down on your back with knees bent and feet on the floor
2. Roll your belt line (low back) into the mat or ground (a slight posterior pelvic tilt)
3. Use the hamstrings to lock your pelvis into position. Do this by digging your heels into the ground and pull them toward your buttocks to tighten your hamstrings holding your pelvis in a posterior tilt
4. Place your hands behind your neck holding the base of your noggin (nuchal line) and keep your elbows open and wide.
5. Look straight up keeping your chin off your chest.
6. Pull your naval into your spine AS YOU EXHALE.
7. As you exhale, PULL YOUR TRANSVERSE ABDOMINALS IN, LIFT YOUR SHOULDER BLADES OFF THE FLOOR UNTIL ONLY THE MID BACK (THORACIC REGION) IS TOUCHING
(NOTE: LIFT STRAIGHT UP AS IF YOU HAVE A GLASS OF WATER ON YOUR CHEST… TRY NOT TO ROLL UP IN AN ARC)
Congratulations, you just executed a perfect crunch!
Continue to use these same principals for all abdominal work. These fundamentals will help facilitate and recruit more abdominal musculature durring your workout giving you “perfect abs”.
NOTE: Don’t forget – no matter how great your ab exercises are, you’ll never see them if you don’t diet. Diet is 80% of getting the abs of your dreams!
Tractor Tire Abs
Here is an entire ab & core workout I put together for GNC utilizing a tractor tire. Since many MMA camps and boot camps us tractor tires, I decided to come up with a few exercises to help you make the most of your tractor tire. Don’t have one? You can get a used on free at your local tractor repair store or dealer – or you can use a stability ball or bench.
FitFluential LLC compensated me for this Campaign. All opinions are my own.
Keep It Stupid Simple
The gym is riddled with so many different types of athletes who have to differentiate their training for the respective discipline that they are training for. Furthermore, even within those disciplines are different body types and inherent deficits that the individual athlete must address if they want to improve performance or aesthetics specifically for their body. While in the gym, it can be quite defeating to immolate the guy next to you unless you are training for the same sport AND have the same body type and needs.
Even with all of these parameters in mind, you will get so much more out of your training if you just K.I.S.S.! Let’s go back to basics, the foundation that training is built upon. Reliable research has been published for years that, if followed, will bring about the desired outcome, whether that be aesthetics or performance.
Keep in mind there are a lot of different philosophies on modalities of exercise (the what, when, where, why, and how of training). Research will support much of it. Even if sometimes the research seems to contradict itself or other published data. This is why it is important to understand the fundamental principals behind the sub-categories we will discuss, and try to employ different combinations until you find what makes you the best in your field.
RESISTANCE:
No matter what sport you are training for, you have to overwhelm and fatigue what your body can already accomplish if you want your body to adapt to a higher level of performance. Think of what your respective sport requires of your body and mock this resistance in the gym.
GOAL: To increase…
#1 Power- work at 80% of your maximum
#2 Hypertrophy (size)- 65-75% of max
#3 Stamina- 40-60% of max
REST & REPETITION:
Rest and repetition go hand in hand. The less rest you give yourself will dictate whether or not you can do the next set at the desired resistance for the desired amount of reps. By decreasing recovery time, you will increase intensity and force your body to adapt to a very intense atmosphere like “competing” However, if your discipline allows for adequate rest, but you still must produce power, or you are trying to get larger muscles and stamina isn’t a factor, then rest as much as needed for the results you need to produce. But allowing your body to recover as “it” dictates will never bring about a more fit level of performance. (Did you here me bodybuilders and powerlifters?)
To Increase Power:
Rest- 2-3 minutes recovery
Repetition- 1-6 reps
To Increase Hypertrophy:
Rest- 1-2 minutes
Repetition- 8-15 reps
To Increase Stamina:
Rest- 10-60 seconds
Repetition- 15+
Tempo:
How fast or slow we execute each repetition can extremely change the intensity of training. Tempo is a very effective tool to help facilitate more muscle fiber recruitment at different points of the range of motion. For instance, we could accentuate the negative (eccentric contraction) by “slowing our roll” on the return. There are many different advantages to tempo changes and holds during the different phases of the repetition. Again, we must dissect the movements that are used in our respective disciplines. Fighters may want a very explosive concentric contraction and a very fast eccentric return as well. A powerlifter may want a slow return during the negative, and a bodybuilder might benefit from maintaining constant tension throughout the lift with no starting and no stopping.
Duration:
This is a very controversial category. It is safe to say we need to train up to, and at sometimes beyond, the length of time we will be competing. For example, if I am running a 5K, and I know I can complete a 10K effortlessly, then I should dominate anything less. If a fighter needs to be ready for 7 five-minute rounds, and they can fight for 8 six-minute rounds at the same intensity, then they will be ready to compete at the highest level possible for fewer rounds.
Be careful not to overtrain, but please push your self, make your body adapt, and DO NOT UNDER-TRAIN! If you have a 1.2 mile swim coming up in a tri, don’t let race day be the first time you try that distance. Train for it, and be prepared!
Fuel
Finally, make sure you are getting the supplements you need to perform your best, repair and grow. As most of you know, I use the Beyond Raw line and truly love it. Unfortunately with training, you are only as good as what you eat. If you eat like a ballerina, you will never be able to look, or perform like, a football player. The fuel you choose for your body is crucial to making positive gains.
Each one of these sub-categories could be its own text book. I just wanted to touch on some fundamentals. You don’t need to know all the crazy science on a cellular level (I love that stuff). It’s more important to look at these things as they relate to, and manifest themselves into, performing at your very best!!!!!
FitFluential LLC compensated me for this Campaign. All opinions are my own.
HOW TO “NOT” START A DIET
So, you wanna start a diet and get skinny. Well hooray for you, good luck with that… nooo, don’t get mad… Just say’n…
OK, I’m sorry. My sarcasm stems from years and years of trying to drive this “how to”, point home. After 3 health clubs, 2 weight loss reality tv shows, thousands of twitter and Facebook friends, and most importantly… my own life, this is what I’ve learned…
ITS HARD AS A “MOFO” TO LOSE WEIGHT!!!!!!!
How do we bear down, draw a line in the sand, and say NO MORE? Wellllll…
The truth is, almost all cold-turkey diets don’t last!
Here is what I mean…
This is what I call “the evolution of a diet”.
1. First, we try purge our house of everything tempting, unhealthy, or non-conducive to a new diet. (most of us now will polish off the rest of our ….fill in the blank… , beer, ice cream, Doritos.. instead of throwing it, or giving it, away)
2. Then we research and grocery shop for the “healthy alternatives”. Try to fill our houses with healthy foods and snacks. (shopping for any and everything that we can eat a dump truck load of and not get fat, instead of realizing, we must learn to eat a little less of everything)
3. Research diets. (Monday, we are going to get a shot of, only god knows what, and eat 500 calories)
4. Join a gym. (We might even hate working out, but all the magazines say we need to workout because lean muscle will burn calories while I sleep)
… Are you getting the point yet? This is a recipe for disaster. Yes, more than likely you will lose weight, maybe even hit your goals, BUT, you will have to change your belief system about food and activity if you ever plan to keep the weight off. 98% of all people, even if they hit their goals, will gain their weight back, and then some.
So what should we do:
Here are some very realistic ways to begin to develop a lifestyle change that will lead to a healthy and successful diet conducive to weight loss and fuelling our performance in or out of the gym.
Week one: Educate and become aware.
As you are eating this week, research your calories; become aware of everything you are putting in your mouth. Decide what really taste good, and decide what you might be able to do without. Also become aware of when you might be eating for taste or actual hunger. Sometimes we just have to suck-it-up-just-be-hungry !
Week two: Purge the naughty.
Only purge the things that you deem a waste. The foods and candies that you know will destroy every attempt at a healthy diet. Continue to research healthy alternatives or substitutions for some of your vices. Try not to binge other foods as a replacement.
Week three: Actual “diet” begins.
I would be surprised if you havn’t noticed a slight change in your waist and a bump in your mood, but even if you havn’t… “STAY THE COURSE” It’s about to get fun… Week three you must begin to look at the amount of food that you are consuming and compare it to what you are burning. This means math… I know I hate math too. The Harris-Benedict Formula will give you an estimate of your Basal Metabolic rate (calories burned at rest).
| BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) – ( 6.76 x age in years ) |
| BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) – ( 4.7 x age in years ) |
Multiply this times our activity level and we can get a close estimate of calories burned per day.
| Little to no exercise | Daily calories needed = BMR x 1.2 |
| Light exercise (1–3 days per week) | Daily calories needed = BMR x 1.375 |
| Moderate exercise (3–5 days per week) | Daily calories needed = BMR x 1.55 |
| Heavy exercise (6–7 days per week) | Daily calories needed = BMR x 1.725 |
| Very heavy exercise (twice per day, extra heavy workouts) | Daily calories needed = BMR x 1.9 |
As long as you eat fewer calories than that number, you will lose weight. Unless you weigh and measure your food (not forever… just until you get a grip on portions and calories) you will never know how many calories you are taking in. After you determine calories out and calories in, you can determine if and how fast you will lose some excess body weight. This is the week you must begin to decrease your portions. Change the way you think! That slight hungry feeling is your body wanting to be skinny, it is the feeling of your beautiful body burning gobs of fat. Please embrace that small hunger feeling, do not chase it away with a burrito.
Week four: proteins, fats, carbs…
now the most delicate part of this “blog Vomit”. How do I make sure I’m losing fat and not muscle? You have to determine where the calories you are eating are coming from. There are a lot of great sites online for this, but you must still know your portions to get correct data. My suggestion for anyone starting a diet and isn’t sure… if you are trying to decide between High protein, or low carb’s, or no fats, let’s just start with equal amounts (in calories) for all of these. In other words, 33% of your calories coming from every substrate except, of course, alcohol… so on a 1200 calorie diet, you could eat 400 calories of protein, 400 calories of carbs, and yes… 400 calories of fats. Don’t make this crazy hard, or what I call majoring-in-the-minors . Its’s just one meal at a time…
FAT VS MUSCLE PART 2: Is Your Workout Getting You Fat?
As I said in Muscle vs. Fat Part 1, “All excess unused calories will be stored in your body. It’s up to you HOW they are stored.“
Runners Store Fat
Running is an activity, requiring moderate intensity performed over a longer duration. Runners primarily (especially in highly trained runners) use slow twitch, slow fatiguing muscle fibers. The primary fuel source for this activity dictated by duration, intensity, and muscles fiber type used is fat stores. As a runner, excess muscle will only slow you down, and protein stores are very heavy and dense and will only yield 4 calories of energy per gram (that’s why a runner’s body typically doesn’t have a lot of muscle – your body doesn’t want it). In comparison, fat will give the athlete over twice as much energy per gram, and metabolically takes less energy to maintain at rest (this is why your body hoards it, whether you burn it all off running or not).
So even with a higher protein diet, any excess calories stored are prone to be stored as fat. It is primal… It is science. Your body is always efficiently meeting the demands you are putting on it. Here is what happens… As your muscle atrophies, you become lighter, and as you store more fat, you can run longer. Congratulations, you are now skinnier and fatter.
Your body doesn’t give a crap if you can win a hot body contest. It’s programed to keep you alive despite the demands and tasks you set before it. How you feel you should look is solely up to psychological and social parameters we put on ourselves. How you perform, on the other hand, is up to the demands you put on your body.
Bodybuilders Store Muscle
Building muscle, in a biological environment, is hard and plays against the odds. The human body finds very little use for excess muscle as it is dense and not very efficient for survival or providing energy. Yes, when these proteins are broken down, some of the amino acids can be used on a cellular level, but our body has amino acid pools that already exist for this and are an efficient storage system for this.
Excess striated skeletal muscle is left (stored) as a useless luxury at best. It’s nice to look at, but after the body has enough skeletal muscle to move and function, the rest becomes very inefficient, energy-wasting luggage we must carry around all day everyday. In order for you to quit storing much needed valuable fat, in leu of storing heavy useless muscle, you must create an alternate environment that will primally dictate some sort of need, so your body will begin to store muscle instead of fat. So, how can we make this happen?
3 ways to Store Muscle NOT Fat:
1. Take away the need for your body to store excess calories as fat. Do not use long bouts of running or moderately intense exercises to control your weight. Restrict calories instead, and try intervals of sprinting or higher intensity shorter duration activities. (sorry runners)
Quit long distance running > 5 miles.
2. Restrict excess calories. All excess calories can be stored as fat. Even if all you eat is pure protein and green vegetables, if you eat more than you burn, you will store these extra calories as fat. We must decrease our sugars and make sure we are getting quality proteins and fats (mono/poly unsaturated fatty acids) to support protein synthesis.
Eat less simple carbohydrates and increase protein if need be.
3. Train Hard. You won’t store muscle, unless uou give your body a reason and a need to store the extra calories as muscle by, intense, short duration, resistance training.
Train with resistance and intensity.
DISCLAIMER FOR HATERS:
This was written with the “big picture in mind and trying to stay under 1000 words, It would be impossible to site and discuss micro metabolic science within these parameters. So unless you find something butt-a#* wrong… don’t be a “douschtard”.
FAT VS MUSCLE PART 1: Weighing It Out
“The excess calories we eat, and how we train, determines if our body is going to store our excess calories as fat or muscle, that can later be used as energy if the need arises.”
MYTH BUSTER
The purpose of this blog is to break down some of the controversy and myths about muscle and fat. I want to clarify the different factors our bodies experience in order to gain, or lose, fat and muscle. Also, we should understand the purpose of muscle and fat as it pertains to biological and metabolic function.
Before we can continue, I want to differentiate between a pound of fat and a pound of human adipose tissue, as well as, the difference in a pound of muscle and a pound of protein. But as we do, lets all agree that a pound is a pound is a pound. Yes? And science will tell us that 1 pound of anything will equal 453.59 grams when discussing gross weight.
FAT
It isn’t fair to say a pound of body fat is equal to a pound of pure fat. Body fat is also called adipose tissue and is comprised of about 80% pure fat. This is where the math finally works out. If one pound equals 453.59 grams, and 1 gram of fat yields 9.3 calories, then 1 pound of fat should yield 4,218 calories of energy. (1 pound=453.59g’ X 9.3-cal = 4218 calories) Yet, we know a pound of fat only gives us 3500 calories worth of energy. This is because the fat we are referring to is truly “adipose tissue” which is composed of other cellular derivatives besides just pure fat.
MUSCLE
Here is why simple math just wont work. Again 1 pound of muscle is 453.59 grams, and if there are 4 calories in 1 gram of protein, 1 pound of muscle would yield 1814 calories of energy, yet it does not. The real numbers are much smaller and very controversial, but we can ball park it close to 1000 calories when talking about striated skeletal muscle. Mostly because 1 pound of skeletal muscle is comprised of more than just pure protein. Just as body fat is only 80% true fat, skeletal muscle is made up of more than just protein. Muscle tissue would include glycogen, fat ,and water. Muscle is also full of a circulatory network, as well as tendons and other structures that wouldn’t fall into “just protein”.
The good news is we don’t have to kill ourselves to figure all of this out. You are kidding yourself if you are trying to dissect your calories down to this microbiological level. Spend your energy on the big picture, which is: What are these two substrates purposed for in our body as they relate to metabolism and building a physically fit physique? FUEL!
FAT/PROTEIN = FUEL
Fat serves many purposes for the body from protecting our vital organs to providing energy, and muscle provides necessary hormones and cellular structures needed to live, even second to second. However, for this discussion, fats and proteins are nothing more than fuel sources. Any and all excess unused calories will be stored in your body. It’s up to you HOW they are stored. The excess calories we eat and how we train determines if our body is going to store our excess calories as fat or muscle, that can later be used as energy if the need arises.
A FAT BODY
When When you see a 250 pound obese person, do you think that extra adipose tissue is vital for his existence? Does his body need 100 extra pounds for warmth, digesting vitamins, or neural and cellular function? The answer is no…
A MUSCULAR BODY
Ok, what about when you see a 250 pound body builder, do you think his body looks at the excess skeletal muscle as vital for life? He surely doesn’t need 20 inch biceps to sustain life. The answer is still no. In each case, their respective bodies have stored the extra calories as either fat or muscle depending on the food and environment that organism has been subject to. And the muscle and fat, when needed, will be broken back down and used as life-sustaining energy… nothing more.
FAT VS MUSCLE: PART 2
My next blog will offer tips on how to make sure you store what you WANT, not what your body wants.
DISCLAIMER FOR HATERS:
This was written with the “big picture in mind and trying to stay under 1000 words, It would be impossible to site and discuss micro metabolic science within these parameters. So unless you find something butt-a#* wrong… don’t be a “douschtard”.
