Heavy weights make you bulky...?

Way back in time, before the internet and cell phones, I went to school for business. I decided to take an anatomy class as my elective to fulfill a science requirement.  Little did I know that one class would change the direction of my life.  

I found it fascinating how the body moves and works. I decided to change my major to kinesiology (the study of movement). Fitness quickly became my focus. 

While learning about the body I found out that there isn’t much of a difference between how men and women’s bodies function when it comes to working out.  

I also learned that there was no such thing as getting “toned”.  

Muscles only do one of two things. They either get bigger (hypertrophy) or they get smaller (atrophy). To make your muscles look better, you need to lose the fat and increase your lean body mass. That’s what “toning” actually is…losing body fat and gaining muscle. If you lose 5 pounds of fat and gain 5 pounds of muscle you will actually have smaller body measurements. The leaner you are, the more muscular or “toned” you look.  As you can see the woman pictured below gained 3 kg or 6.6 pounds of muscle and now looks “toned”. It also took her 4 years to gain the muscle. No ladies, you don’t gain muscle quickly.   

How do you do this?  It’s quite simple really.  You eat well for your specific genetic type and lift heavy weights.

Yes, heavy weights. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/health/06real.html?_r=2 

Lifting heavy weights isn’t going to make you bulky as long as you don’t increase your intake of certain foods to go along with it.  Eating and drinking mass amounts of calories will get you bulky, not lifting heavy weights. It’s also not a bad idea to get tested for food allergies. That can have an effect on how well you break down and absorb your food as well. 

Both of the girls pictured below train with Bret Contreras. They are fitness competitors who have decided to compete in powerlifting.  For those of you who don’t know, powerlifting is a sport where you lift as much weight as you can in usually three different lifts: squat, bench press, and deadlift. 

This is Erin McComb. She weighs around 100 lbs and can squat 115 lbs, bench press 85 lbs, and deadlift 155 lbs.

   

This is Sammie Cohn.  Sammie weighs around 130 lbs and can squat 175 lbs, bench press 90 lbs, and deadlift 245 lbs.

The man pictured below is lifting the same 225 pounds as Sammie.

   

“Whaaaa??” you may ask. “How can that be? That girl should be bulky like the guy in the picture because they are lifting the same heavy weights,” right?

As you can see the girls in the pictures are nowhere near “bulky.”  Again bulky comes from the amount of food and drinks that you consume in a given day/week/month. The man pictured above consumes a large amount of calories to be able to maintain his muscle mass, or what some may refer to as bulk. 

Lift heavy and watch your food intake and you, too, will be on your way to “toning” that body of yours. 

Counting Calories...Why Your Count May Be Off

Why do we count calories? Do we actually know how many calories we are ingesting? - Let’s start this out with the definition of a calorie: A calorie is the approximate amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius.  The Calorie, as used to indicate 1 kcal on U.S. food labels, is derived from Atwater's 1887 article on food energy in Century magazine and Farmers' Bulletin 23 in 1894. 

Think about this the next time you read the back of a food label (which can be off by 20% in some cases and still be in compliance with FDA regulations ) you are judging your calorie count on how to heat up one gram of water one degree C. Think back to what other practices were considered cutting edge in 1884, blood-letting, leeches, and the healing powers of mercury to name a few. Science and medicine has grown by leaps and bounds since the 1800’s. However, the way we think about a calorie hasn’t really changed.  We don’t give it another thought.  The back of the label says this piece of food has 100 kcal so that’s what I’m ingesting and my body is using every bit of it right? Wrong…

Calorie counting is not an exact science.  Here are a few things to consider.  Let’s say that you have low stomach acid, lactose intolerant, gluten intolerant, or have some sort of allergy to certain foods that interferes with your absorption. Also the older you get the more it will interfere with your ability to absorb your calories as well. Now your calorie count is skewed because you didn’t absorb all of the food that you just ate!  Part of it just passed right on through you without being properly broken down and absorbed.  How many calories did your body utilize? Who knows? 

Did you know that different foods have different bio-availability? ( http://www.eufic.org/article/en/artid/Nutrient-bioavailability-food/ )  That means that some foods are easier for your body to break down and be utilized. 

The protein index listed below uses a "whole egg" as a value of 100. There are certain foods that provide even more nitrogen than whole eggs. That’s how one can get an index reading that exceeds 100. 

Protein Source

Bio-Availability Index

Whey Protein Isolate Blends

100-159

Whey Concentrate

104

Whole Egg

100

Cow’s Milk

91

Egg White

88

Fish

83

Beef

80

Chicken

79

Casein

77

Rice

74

Soy

59

Wheat

54

Beans

49

Peanuts

43

As you can see there is a vast difference in how your body absorbs different types of protein.  Not to mention carbohydrates and fats as well.  

Another thing to think about is the thermogenic effect of food. 

The thermogenic effect refers to the energy (calories) used in digestion, absorption, and distribution of nutrients.  Yes, your body has to work (burn calories) to digest that chicken wing you just ate.  Protein uses 20-35% of the calories in the protein that you just consumed to digest that protein. So if you consume 100 calories of protein, about 1/3 of those calories went to the digestion, absorption, and distribution of nutrients.…Carbohydrates 5-15% and Fats 3-15%, ( http://www.jacn.org/content/23/5/373.long ) on average. So now the calories that you think you're getting are, for the most part, are NOT the calories you think you are getting. 

My suggestion to people that are trying to lose weight is to get a food intolerance test first.  It is better to know what foods your body wants verse which ones it doesn’t.  You may be surprised what foods you think are “healthy” aren’t that good for your particular genetic makeup.  I’ll write about this next time.  

www.powerperformancetraining.com 

Don't Judge Your Trainer By Their Body...Acknowledge Knowledge

In my over 20 years of training clients, I have seen one mistake that people make repeatedly when choosing a trainer.  All too often, clients simply glance around the gym or browse through some websites and then choose a trainer based on their looks -- and not their actual knowledge base.  “Hey, that person looks great!” they think to themselves.  “I bet they know everything about training!”

This is akin to thinking that the best person to teach you about basketball is the tallest person you can find, or that the shortest person you know will be the best at teaching you about miniature golf.

In fact, consider this:  in the picture above, who would you choose to be your boxing trainer? The younger guy or the older one?

Pictured is a young Mike Tyson with his trainer Cus D’Amato. Now, could Mike Tyson train you in boxing?  He probably could, but wouldn’t you rather have the guy that trained Mike to be a champion? Of course you would.

Cus D’Amato also trained Floyd Patterson and José Torres to be champions.  Cus himself never even made it to ranks of a pro boxer, but he was one of the most revered boxing trainers. It was his knowledge and years of experience that helped turn those boxers into champions.

There are several examples of this in the sports and fitness world. Just think about how many coaches out there aren’t champions themselves, but have taken their clients or teams to great heights. 

It used to be that if you wanted to find someone to train you, you would look around the gym and find the most muscular guy or hottest girl – and that would be your starting point. I’ve worked, managed, and owned a few gyms in my lifetime and have watched people use this process to find their fitness “expert.”   

When I previously managed one gym in particular, there was one trainer who would be chosen by clients repeatedly because he looked great. He had a great physique, wide shoulders, a small waist and built legs. He was also an ex-collegiate athlete who had been training in his specific sport for most of his entire life. He didn’t turn pro because of an injury that put an end to his career.  Most of his workouts had been written for him by his coaching staff, from junior high all the way through until college.  He just showed up and did the workouts. He didn't write a single program for himself.  He didn’t have any clue on how to program a routine for a normal population that hadn't spent most of their lives training for a sport.  He would have all of his clients do the exact same workouts that he himself did from his college days to become bigger, faster and stronger at his particular sport.  Most who trained with him ended up quitting because they would get injured or would quickly become over-trained. 

I used to train a girl who simply wanted to look better.  She followed all of my advice and training programs.  After training with me for a while, she looked great -- so good that a gentleman who happened to own a gym stopped her on the street and offered her a job as a trainer. Did this guy want me to go work for his gym? After all, it was my program design and diet advice that helped her to achieve her look. No -- he wanted her because she looked great. He didn’t really care that she barely knew how train herself, let alone how to write programs for other people. He just wanted her in the gym because she looked the part. 

I also knew of a trainer who used to have their clients choose exercises from a deck of fitness cards. Yes, a deck of cards that had exercises printed on them. Whatever cards those clients picked out determined their workout for the day. But, hey -- that trainer looked great, so he must have known some secret about the mystical and random choosing of exercises from a deck of cards, right?  Wrong.

Don’t be afraid to interview your prospective trainer on how they would train you on your specific goals. 

Do you want to get stronger with adding little to no mass to your body? This is important for athletes that have to compete in a weight class.

Do you want to simply have a six-pack and don’t really care how strong you are?

Do you want to be strong and lean?

Do you just want your knee or lower back to stop hurting?

Do you want to be better at sprinting or running?  Perhaps 100 m, 200 m, 5k, 10k, a marathon or maybe even a triathlon?

Do you want to be more explosive?

Do you want to be better at a particular sport?

Do you want to be able to do a pull-up or two…or five…or 10? 

Do you just want to add as much muscle as possible and get huge?

Do you want to increase your endurance? 

Do you have a specific fitness test that you are trying to pass?

All of these goals have different training protocols and should be programmed to achieve that specific goal.  

What does your trainer have you do if, during a push up, bench press or over-head press, your shoulder or knee starts to hurt during a squat, lunge or step-up?  

Do they just make you stop the exercise?

Push through the pain?

Or do they actually look for the cause of why you’re hurting and then address the problem? 

Make sure that the trainer you choose can answer questions like these and doesn’t just give you a “one size fits all” WOD.

  

www.powerperformancetraining.com