Effects of Cold

Cold has always been used in athletics for many purposes. It keeps down swelling, helps with pain, soreness, injury, feeling refreshed, lowering body temperature, etc. It has so many uses. Cold has another affect on our body.

It's the reason why people in cold climates are constantly eating lard, butter, milk, blubber, etc. They need to fatten up because they are constantly burning off their fat reserves to stay warm. Just how it's done with mammals in hibernation. Now imagine someone who lives in a tropical climate eating butter, lard, milk, etc, and you will get a very big person. There are two kinds of fat, brown fat and yellow/white fat. Brown fat is sometimes referred to as good fat and white fat as bad fat. There is no good and bad though if it exists in our body naturally (just like with cholesterol). When they mean it's bad, what they really mean is there is an overabundance of it.

Brown fat's main purpose is to generate body heat. White fat's purpose is to store energy for later use. We all know a fatter person will do better in the cold, the reason why is not simply insulation but also because they have more fat to burn. Brown fat (baby fat) is high in babies, and brown fat naturally goes up when the whether begins to get colder. This is true for all mammals including humans. Check obesity rates for people in cold climates compared to warm climates and you will see a similar trend.

So back to cold. Athletes eat legendary amounts of calories sometimes so much there is no way they will ever burn off all the calories they ate. Yet they stay lean. Michael Phelps is a good example. Which is also a big reason why calories consumed or burned really tells you very little about what you will look like but I will save that for another post.

Athletes use cold a lot. Phelps for example spends extended periods in cold water. Athletes often use ice baths, cold showers, cold drinks, ice packs, etc. People often use heat to lose weight. All heat will do is make you sweat and lose precious water out of your body. Cold is what will force your body to try to increase it's temperature and metabolism. Ever worked out or trained in the cold? Or even gone skiing or snowboarding and get a good sweat going? Notice how that body heat feels different than training in normal conditions or warm conditions?

In the cold, though it takes longer for your body to warm up, your body will burn brown fat to generate heat, and use stored fat as energy to maintain activity to stay warm.

With this all being said, if you try to sit in a meat locker and wait to turn thin, you may freeze to death before this happens. There is also more risk of injury training in cold temperatures. There is no one answer. Everything is a small piece of a bigger picture. You are always going to be dealing with small percentages. Each thing does a little, combine enough things together and you not only have a lifestyle change but a body change.

Self Experimentation

Do not be afraid to experiment, but use good judgment, be prudent, use common sense. Whether you realize it or not, every time you change your work out, sleep at odd hours, work late, wake up early, drink alcohol, smoke, eat a lot of fruit, get sick, go hike, be in love, just about anything, it affects you, and you are doing an an experiment on yourself. What I am encouraging is to log and control your experiments. That's the birth of everything we know about the body.

In the end no one knows you as well as you know yourself because no one spends as much time with you as yourself. A doctor can only tell you so much off of your symptoms but they are also not following you around all day to see what you are doing to yourself.  Not only that but there is a big difference between doctors and scientists. Scientists do experiments to figure something out then teach it to doctors, doctors go apply this new information.

For instance if you have problems sleeping, look at days when you did sleep well. What was different? Did you eat something different? Eat later? Earlier? Different mind set? Did not nap? Took a bath? Etc. Or how eating breakfast or skipping breakfast affects your weight. How cardio affects your body as opposed to weight training? If you believe weight training alone will make you bigger, how will you know unless you try it?

The same is true for trainers. Everyone is different, every time they do something with a client they should log and see what happens and make adjustments based on their findings. If workouts and routines and changed randomly, how will you track anything? Any trainer needs to be more scientist and less a cheerleader.

Taking Classes

Taking classes at the gym is not a bad thing especially if your other option is doing nothing or you have a hard time with motivation, or you just want to sweat and have fun. I feel classes as a tool though is only effective and useful in a few settings.

In skill building, for example: classes in Olympic Lifts, Kettlebells, Pilates, Yoga, Martial Arts and sport fighting. The smaller the class the more affective they become, and of course if you work one on one it's even better, except for possibly martial arts and sport fighting where you will need sparring partners. What is unique is martial arts and sport fighting needs sparring partners the most, but martial artists and sport fighters like boxers appreciate one on one training more than anyone else. Whether paying for one on one time with a boxing coach or taking private lessons from a black belt.

Classes in general are not designed for max results, but to maximize use of space and available equipment. This is not just true for classes but also for boot camps. At one time I did a lot of boot camps but after a while I stopped doing them. I realized it was not efficient and scientific enough. I had to spend too much time on the most deconditioned, and could not focus completely on the rest of the class. If it's not just nonstop running around the class will lose focus. Form starts to go out the window, the most common problem is overextending. And really the members getting results did not truly come from the boot camps but everything they did outside of boot camps. It was easy to see the people who would do well. They were always the people who would do well regardless, had found some motivation, set a plan, and began to do it. The good thing about the boot camp though was making friends, sense of camaraderie, and the social aspect. A lot of times the members went to eat right after, hell so did I.

Classes are cheap to do and highly profitable. They aren't about maximizing results, it's about maximizing space and time for profit. Basically even if you are paying 10 bucks a class. Economically it's renting a 2x2 sq. ft of space for $10 for one hour. As many of those spots they can sell, and as much sweat induced in that hour, the better. Also the students are interchangeable, and can be easily replaced, and so do not need to be monitored, nor is it possible to monitor their progress. Like I told you the goal of training is always is injury prevention and rehabilitation. Those are hard goals to keep in a large class. The teacher also has no idea about who is injured, the safety of the attendees are is in their own hands. If that is the case they might as well work out on their own.

To get into any shape, you need lots of space, the right equipment (don't believe the hype that you can get in shape with any equipment or even no equipment, all scientists need tools and equipment), logging and data tracking, a plan, and a coach/guide. No one does it alone. No one. Either their guide in the form of a real person working with them one on one, a teacher in a class, a teacher in the past, a DVD, a book, a magazine article or series of magazine articles, or an amalgam of advice from different people. All of those are guides but not all equal in value. The hard part is finding the right guide, as all of them want your money.

I have no definitive way to find a good guide. The approach I have always taken is the scientific one. Meaning I try them all out and make notes for comparison. I am an expert on all the work outs that don't work, diets that don't work, forms of rehabilitation that don't work because I've already tried them. Once I was speaking to one of my friends about a certain piece of modern equipment, because he heard it was the next big thing. I told him a lot about it and in the end told him it was crap. He said how do I know so much about it then (because most people form negative opinions about things they know nothing about)? Because I went out and tried it, studied it, and got certified in it just to be sure it was crap and taught him how to make it at home with stuff from home depot.

DO NOT BE AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT. Whether you know it or not, you are always doing experiments on your body, you are just not logging any of the results.

Calculating Failure Into The Equation

There are so many things out to choose from as far as losing weight or getting toned. People will try anything from surgery to different work outs and diets. Do they all just not work? Good ones or bad, they all come from some sort of background where it worked for somebody out there. If you try anything and stick with it, it's most likely bound to work. So why doesn't it?

People don't calculate failure into the equation when they are trying to hit a fitness goal. Most of the things out there have a high failure rate. Meaning it may work but eventually you are bound to fail. There's so many advertisements out there about someone who competed a certain amount of days on a work out, or drug, or post surgery and they look great (though a lot of times its scams and the photos are taken in reverse). What they don't tell you is how many people have tried it and abandoned it. The abandonment rate.

All those solutions work for someone, but not all for you. Be realistic. Can you really work out like that every day for the rest of your life? Can you truly be on that drug for the rest of your life? Can you be on that stringent diet for the rest of your life? Can you sustain that post surgery body for the rest of your life?

If you can't sustain it for the rest of your life it will never work. Yes this work out or diet worked for someone. There are also people who can hold their breath for over 6 minutes. Doesn't mean something that hard is something you will be able to accomplish. It's not impossible, but why bet the farm on a 1% chance? It's not about gimmicks or diets, it's about lifestyle changes and not looking for something temporary but forever.

Before you spend all that money on that surgery, ask yourself, can you and do you even know how to sustain that new body? Before you try that work out where you have to train 2 hours every day, can you really do that forever? Be rational. Almost every weight loss show has a high percentage of cast members who gain the weight back. It was not sustainable for them.

Eat At Regular Intervals

Get your body used to eating at regular times so it gets into a routine of digestion and metabolizing. Your body adapts and you never want to have it keep trying to play catch up to your eating schedule. Or for that matter sleeping schedule. Eat within an hour of rising, and rise and eat around the same time every day.

Incremental Weight

Weight gain or loss never happens all at once but in small increments. Few pounds here few pounds there. Overtime it adds up. The drawback is that it sort of sneaks up on you. But there is a positive to this. Whether you are losing weight you can't afford to lose or gaining weight you can't afford to gain, it never happens over night. At any time you can break the chain before it gets too late. If you were to gain 60lbs overnight, that would be pretty hard to stop. If you gained 60lbs in 6 months, that gives you lots of chances and time to realize what's going on and nullify it. It's like stopping a kidnapper who kidnaps 100 people all at once, or one at a time over a 100 days. One you can prepare for, the other you can't. It all starts with awareness. Think about it.

The Economics Of Food

In a previous life, while still training martial arts and athletic training, (training myself not others) I was a stock broker working in the world of finance, investments, and banking. I have several certifications in fitness, and in finance/banking/investments I may have even more, including a series 7 and 66 licenses (whatever field I go into, I dive all in to learn as much as I can and that has always been the key to my success).

There's two ways to make a profit. You either make more money, or you cut more expenses. Either way your profit side is affected. Money is money, it doesn't matter how it gets there. Speaking with clients over the years I noticed a pattern. Money didn't get spent on shopping sprees as was the stereotype in the 80s and early 90s. Nor was it always going into expensive cars or lavish lifestyles. For the average American, I noticed a lot of their disposable income was going to food and drinks. As time went on, as Americans got bigger and bigger (and the foodie craze, online food reviews, blogging, etc took off) the food expenses went up and up.

But food is like weight gain. It's always in small increments so you don't notice. If you bought 200 dollar shoes, your spouse or parent may freak out because its abrupt or noticeable. But you only buy shoes like that maybe once a year, lets say even twice a year. That's still only 400 bucks. Now who would freak out if you spent 5 dollars a day on coffee? No one. But in one year that adds up to 1825!!! And I could make an argument that you do need good shoes, but you don't always need coffee. Income and expenditures is a yearly if not lifetime game, people focus too much on the day to day. It's all psychology and perception. I always wish people were more rational but that's an irrational want to have.

So when people came to me looking for advice, they of course never think it's all being blown on food. They just know they have no money at the end of the month and blame their wage (which is less in their control than expenses so why complain about the thing you control less? Whine about what you can control more). But when you do the math they are always shocked. Let me use two real life examples:

I have a female friend who works in the service industry as well as being a student. She always complains about not having money and not being able to pay off her debt. So I said it's probably because she eats out too much. Of course she denies it. Expect everyone to deny it for whatever reason. If someone tells you they only eat out 1-2 times a week, it's more like 4-5 times a week if not more and if you include take out and prepackaged food expect to increase that range again. She blames being a poor student and not enough income. They will always blame that.

So I told her to do the math and add it up. She grosses 2500. She nets 2000 (due to most of it being in tips). After bills (including rent, utilities, insurance, gas, phone, car) she still had 1000 left. Her tuition was paid for by student aid and her rent is low because she lives with a roommate. So I asked her where all that money went? She didn't know but now she was also curious but wasn't willing to bite the bullet. So I told her to write down every time she goes out and how much she spends: including gratuity and even going out for drinks or dessert or even when someone else pays and you only leave tip. Also parking, valet, price for take out foods, ordering food, prepackaged foot, gratuity for take out, just all the costs of eating out.

She realized she went out to eat on average twice a day (she originally told me she only went out to eat twice a week). It added up to being around 700-800 dollars a month not including money on groceries. No wonder she couldn't pay off her debt and was not saving. Let's just say after realizing this, in two months she paid off all her debt.

My second example is my former roommate. He always overdrew his account and was constantly late on rent. He blamed of course his income and got very defensive if you asked him about it. We also happened to work in the same office (of course doing different things). So I spent a lot of time with the guy and so for one month I logged his spending habits. He usually skipped breakfast. He always ate out for lunch and picked up dinner on the way home. That's on weekdays. On weekends he ate out even more. He spent on average 15 dollars a day on food on weekdays, on weekends it was 20. He also spent around 25 dollars on groceries a week (usually on soda, cereal, and snacks). So about 140 (and this is just a low ball range) a week on food, and this was a guy desperately broke who never wanted to hang out or go watch movies or anything because he said he was too broke and made too little. He was also in a lot of debt. In 4 weeks he spent 560 but because of his debt, all his extra money was supposed to go into paying it off but usually he could barely pay the minimum (which didn't include interest). So he didn't even have 560 in disposable income yet he was spending that on food. Not only was he going broke and heavily into debt, but he was also becoming morbidly obese. He went from 170 to 260 in 6 months. A big change was he used to live with his parents who always fed him, now he had to handle food on his own and boy did he handle it.

Even from my own experiments with weight gain, it is expensive to gain weight. As I put on pounds I noticed the difference each week in my food and grocery bills. Food, drinks, and everything associated with it adds up, don't kid yourself. It is expensive to gain weight. It is even more expensive to be overweight and maintain that size, let alone increase it.

Now on top of all that, if you are obese, imagine how much money you must spend to try to lose that weight. That's the expensive thing about being over-fat. You spend a lot getting fat, you spend even more trying to lose it, especially if you keep failing at it.

A friend looked at this giant horse of a Great Dane the other day. He commented, man it must be expensive to feed something that big. The same rule applies for humans.

But if you do lose the weight, and you keep it off it will eventually add dividends to your pocket and health (like any investment). This is a guarantee. The savings on just preventing future medical expenses alone is worth it. People say eating healthy is expensive. I ask how long their outlook is? Is it a daily outlook or a yearly or lifetime? Because in the long run they will save. They may also be confused with the math. Yes weekly groceries may go up, but weekly eating out expenses will go down.

Obesity is no longer just a social issue, it is also a economic one.



About the Author:

Sam Y. is a Personal Trainer, Coach, Performane Enhancement Specialist, Corrective Enhancement Specialist, and holds multiple certifications. He is also an avid Martial Artist, training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Kickboxing, Boxing, and MMA. He is also the author of the popular fitness blog All Out Effort as well as the popular martial arts blog Inner BJJ. You can find him in the Los Angeles area personal training his clients, or at home annoying his wife, or on Facebook at his personal fitness page.

Awareness

I talked about weight as just a way to measure changes. Another important reason to track progress is because of awareness. Just being aware causes you to make micro-choices in habits, lifestyle, eating, that will affect a larger picture and will have large ripple effects.

People who never want to check or track progress out of fear tend to end up in a vicious cycle. They don't want to track progress because they are afraid they are doing worse. But because they don't track their progress they do worse. And because they are doing worse, they don't want to track progress. And because of that they get even worse and so on and so forth ad nauseam. It's irrational, illogical, and very human. Imagine anyone trying to study anything, from tapeworms to growth of trees who never tracked anything. They would get nowhere and any findings they make would be purely accidental and coincidental and impossible to repeat.

The small effort to track though will have a very different cycle that will make you better and better. You track because you are progressing. You are progressing because you track.

It's human to be stupid. It's also human to be smart. Be aware of the choices you make.

The Business Of Weight

A lot of people hate weighing themselves. The main reason is because of the idea of weight and all that it means. Even "skinny" people fret over weight. Yes it is a partial indicator of health but it's not the only indicator and it does not paint the whole picture. An extremely large and muscular athlete could be considered overweight, but you aren't taking into account many other factors.

The issue is, weight has been put on a pedestal and not treated like what it really is. Weight is just a place marker. A way to scientifically track changes, where you've been, what happened, what may have led to causes. If you don't log your weight frequently, there is no way to know how certain things affect you. A day without proper sleep, a week of eating too much carbs, a few days of skipping breakfast. If you only weigh yourself once a year, you will know nothing about your body or how things can make your weight fluctuate.

Like a bookmark or dog earing pages of a book, it's a way to know how far you've come and what happened in between. The same way scientists log migration of animals. Your fitness needs to be a controlled scientific experiment.

Speak Of The Devil

So shortly after my post about Rulon Gardner, who decides to walk into the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu academy I was training at? Rulon Gardner. He was next door at a trendy Hollywood bootcamp and working out with the other Biggest Losers and Bob Harper. But out of those guys, he's the only one who is a wrestler and former MMA fighter so of course he walks in. He watched class and hung out for maybe 20 minutes. I got to meet him and he told me he's lost around 140lbs already. Good gawd! But of course he did, this is Rulon we are talking about. He was still over-fat, but his arms, shoulders, chest, and legs were already looking developed. We also spoke about MMA, he was offered a fight with Fedor Emelianenko. He would consider it if the money was right. He is a very large man with huge mits for hands. I really hope he wins that show.

On a side note - I was scared for my life he would walk in and want to wrestle with someone and it would end up being me lol.

Processed Foods

You hear all the time that processed food is bad. But why? Simplest way to put it is, eating processed food is taking real food and pre-chewing and digesting it up, then eating that food. Processing partially eliminates the stuff our chewing, saliva, and digestion are supposed to do. So what does that mean? It means it messes up our digestive systems, and also the food hits our system much quicker than real food would because it doesn't have to go through the long journey of being broken down. That means it shocks our blood stream, our body reacts to this by gaining weight and other medical aberrations. We have all these systems and organs in our body, it's quite incredible, but all those things take time to work and regulate our body. Processed food floods our system quicker than we have been able to adapt to. What do we do with all that extra food matter? We either store it or it backlogs and causes breakdown of our system. It takes thousands of years for adaptation to take place but processed foods have sprung up quickly and that technology is accelerating infinitely quicker than our bodies can handle.

The Shake Weight

Rest Is Our Friend

The work out elicits changes in your body, your rest time applies those changes. You have to use rest as your ally. If you never rest, you can work out all you want but your body won't have to make any of the adaptations you are demanding of it.

One of the biggest enemies of training is over training. It not only causes injury but also causes people to make invisible micro choices in their eating where they end up reward eating. Both of which go against the goal of training, which is injury prevention and being lean and strong.


Water boils at 212°F. You don't get extra boiled water if you boil higher than that nor is it efficient. You will get "buff" training and resting. You won't get extra "buff" by over training. You don't want to keep going where you only get maybe 20% more gain at the risk of 80% injury. It's better to gain 80% at 20% chance of injury or less.

Find Reasons Why You Can

You can find a million reasons why you can't do something for your health and you can blame a lot of things. Spend that energy on finding reasons why you CAN. Inner self talk, thoughts, it's things you can't quantify or measure. Working out you can, it's instantly productive. If your life is at a stand still, you don't think you are moving forward, well then physically move forward! Exercise is instant productivity, it's doing something, its measurable, it's quantifiable. It will also have crossover effects where it will affect your inner self talk and make it more productive. Working out will give you the reasons on why you should keep working out. Be productive, get used to that feeling, and your mind will follow.

Goal of Training

Is always injury prevention/rehabilitation first. Second is everything else, whether it be weight loss, weight gain, or performance. All great athletes, all the teams that have done the best, have been injured the least. A truly fit person is not someone who can perform but gets hurt all the time; a truly fit person is someone who never gets hurt, sick, or injured. That allows them the time to excel on all their secondary goals.

There is also a HUGE difference between working out and activities. Some people will play tennis, hike, or play soccer, etc. and think that they worked out. They didn't. The reason is the goals. A work out always has a goal, of course as I mentioned injury prevention, maybe also weight loss. But ultimately the work out's goal is to incite a change in yourself. An activity doesn't necessarily need a goal (and it can't be measured or logged like a work out), and if it does have a goal, it's just to be better at that activity. Working out causes changes, activities express those changes. And why have a goal or make your activity work? Just enjoy it with no strings attached. You did all the work already in the work out, practices, etc.

So make sure your work outs are always goal oriented and you are logging and working towards something.

Small Choices

Making small improvements can have large benefits. It's hard to make big changes. Incremental change is simple and hard to fail at. One by one improve every choice. Bad choices to good choices, even good choices to better choices. Like replacing soda with juice. Or from using olive oil to organic olive oil. If that's even too hard, instead of improving little things every day, start out with one little thing a week, then move to two things a week. Can't change all your habits? Change just one, then move to another. Or go from alternating (veggies instead of fries every other week) to consistent (veggies over fries from now on). Start as minor as you have to, just start. However small, you can make improvements, but keeping adding onto your previous improvements until you don't even realize how many good things you are doing for yourself. The main thing is you are changing yourself into someone that always seeks to improve, and that will show up in everything you do.

Advice And Why We Suck At Them

People suck at advice when it comes to fitness. Whether it's giving it or receiving it. When you want to get healthy, everyone has an opinion and will offer up advice (whether they are healthy themselves or not). You don't have to be fit yourself to have an opinion right? So what do you listen to?

Not only that but people always ask for advice. When people find out I am a trainer, they always ask me for advice (they don't want to train with me, just want a simple tip), and it's usually for spot burning. Just melting fat in a certain area (as if regions of the body are like continents separated by a body of water and you can isolate one region from another. As opposed to the body being one whole connected unit). They tell me that's all they need or want and if I tell them the magic trick, they will go out and do it religiously. As if all this time they were just lacking knowledge, not motivation.

First of all there is no magic fix. Secondly even if I do humor them and give them advice and guidelines I know most likely they will fail at it. Whether they are CEOs or simple students.Why? People are terrible at taking fitness advice. It's not about doing something, it's about changing something. How would me telling someone something or giving them advice cause a behavioral change? You are not doing something not because you don't have the knowledge or no one gave you advice, it's because it's not part of your behavior to wake up early and jog or go hike instead of drink the night before. They've heard it all before and still they don't change so why would anything I tell them affect a change? It's unfounded optimism.

If someone never cooks yet I told them the secret is preparing your own meals, why would they change their behavior and start cooking every meal? It may happen for a little bit but would it last long? You have to calculate for those obstacles, calculate for your own short comings, calculate for your own reality. They ask for advice as is they are this pliable robot that can be trained to do something on one simple command. That's not human.

Even people who freely offer advice, good or bad ones, why would that all of a sudden affect a change? Behavior needs to change and behavior doesn't change with simple advice.

But they won't be happy unless I tell them something so I do (knowing they won't do it anyway) but always close with, it's not about tricks or advice, it's about a lifestyle change. You can't change just one thing, or changing your work out or your diet, it's about changing yourself.

This takes lots of practice, patience, guidance, mentoring, support, motivation, practice, and practice. If I told you a way to get nice abs is to hold a plank for example, you may or may not do it but it won't change anything about who you are. If I was there and made you hold a plank every day, while encouraging you and giving you things to think about as far as healthy ways to live, this will affect a change.

It's not about little tricks or techniques, it's about concepts. And concepts unlike tricks cannot be taught in a 5 minute conversation. Concepts take a long time to explain and apply. The best example I can give is this. You have never fought before. You walk into a martial arts dojo and find the master and ask him to give you one tip on how to be a black belt level fighter. When your friends ask you if you signed up there, you reply, no I didn't need to, he gave me a tip on how to be a black belt. This obviously sounds ridiculous because it's not realistic (though there are people out there who think they can fight because of watching a movie, reading an article on fighting, or they got a tip on some secret technique). So how would the same thing work by walking up to a fitness professional and asking for advice?

The opposite would be nonprofessionals freely giving out advice. That's like getting fighting tips from a white belt. But you walk into any dojo and it's the white belts who always have the most advice, teach the most, and have the most opinions. They just don't know any better yet. And in my experience it's usually the most unfit people who have the most advice about fitness.

Women Bulking Up

I have talked about this before but it's worth mentioning again because for a lot of women have this fear. To wake up looking like a body builder. Or they have to avoid certain work outs, or train differently because they are a women.

When I train my male athletes, I don't train them specific for them being a man, I train them specific for a goal. It's not gender specific. That's how most male athletes train. Not specific to their gender, but specific to a goal. For a lot of women, if a man does that work out, they need a completely different one. I see online all the time for women's work outs, women's health, fat burning work outs for women. Fat burning is fat burning and is not gender specific. It's like wanting to learn math, but because a lot of men are taking the class, they want a specific math for women's course. In a way that concept is insulting. A work out is a work out, men AND women should be able to do it. The work out doesn't care what gender you are. Somehow a body weight lunge is specific for a women and heavy squat is specific for a man? Like the weights or the movements care? The movement is based on physics and function not on sex. You break down work outs and they are just pushing and pulling movements. There is no way science will determine the act of pushing or pulling is specific for a man. That is...stupid. It's all about perception. They see men do something a lot, its a male act, women do it it's a women's act. Swimming from end to end of a pool for a competition is male, whereas swimming in the middle of a pool like in synchronized swimming is a female act? It's just perception because of the people who dominate that activity, not the activity itself. Do not mistake the participants FOR the activity. Let's say a lot of gay men combed their hair. Combing your hair still is not a gay activity. A lot of men lift heavy, but heavy lifting is not a male activity.

To be honest a trainer really has no idea what a work out for a women is supposed to be (even a female trainer). They just give you what they think you want: low weight, high reps, focus on abs, a lot of thigh exercises, and it's...got to be easy but very aerobic. Because somehow someone said that's a girls work out (and it was created by being exact opposite of traditional work outs of being heavy, low reps, etc.) except that men and women both have same muscle tissue and same amount of limbs and function and move in the same way. So why work out differently? That's just nonsense. There is no proof that's specific for women nor is there any proof it's more effective at fat burning than a universal work out, actually research shows it's much less effective.

Ah so where does this concept come from? It's because they see men who get very large, muscular, and bulky and attribute it to their work out style. It's not. It comes down to 2 simple things. Men have way more testosterone and less estrogen. And the men who want to get bigger will eat more. That's it. Women will never have the testosterone (without aid of anabolics) to get like that. And unless you are eating like a horse, you shouldn't get any bigger either. In fact you take any large muscular man, ask him to do his normal work out, except restrict his diet to say how much a 140lb women would likely eat. And lower his testosterone and increase his estrogen I will guarantee in a short matter of time no matter how manly his lifting is, he will shrink and start to look like a women. If a women starts to see more muscles, it's not necessarily they got bigger or more muscular, its that they lost the subcutaneous layer of fat that used to cover up their muscles. A work out can only do so much, you see how hard it is to lose weight with working out alone, imagine how hard it is to gain weight with working out alone? It's diet, genetics, and hormones that paint the rest of the picture.

The truth is, someone more muscular burns a lot of calories just existing. Muscles is the enemy of fat and bulk, not the friend. Food is the friend of size.

Men don't limit themselves in these ways. Why should women? To do this would be to set limits on themselves When is it a male thing to be powerful? In any setting. Don't fall for the marketing tricks. There is a saying: after a while the victim victimizes themselves. DO NOT be your own worst enemy. 

Rulon Freakin Gardner On The Biggest Loser

As a wrestler, athlete, sports trainer, and martial artist I have been following the career of Rulon Gardner. Ask any wrestler and they will know who he is. Ask any sports writer or strength and conditioning coach and they will know who he is. He may be an unfamiliar name to a lot of personal trainers and aerobics instructors. So to fill you in, this is who he is:

Rulon was an All-American wrestler at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In the Olympics, and in the world of sports there is few names that brought fear like the Russian named Alexander Karelin. Karelin won 3 Olympic Gold medals, 9 World Championships, undefeated in 13 years and had not given up a point in the last 6. In 2000 Rulon beat him (albeit controversially) and won Gold. Then in 2001 he won the World Championships in Greco-Roman wrestling. He was the first American to do all three (let alone win Olympic and World in Greco).

As a child Rulon was impaled by an arrow in a show-and-tell accident. 1990 he lost his daughter in a car accident. In 2002 he was stranded on a wilderness snowmobile accident and lost a toe to frostbite. In 2004 with that missing toe he won the Olympic trials and won Bronze in the Olympics. In 2004 also he was flung from his motorcycle when he was struck by a car. At the end of that same year he competed in his first MMA fight in Japan against Hidehiko Yoshida and won. In 2007 he was in a plane crash into Lake Powell. He was forced to swim in 44 °F water for over an hour. He along with 2 friends survived overnight in 28 °F weather with no shelter or fire.

And finally now Rulon is on The Biggest Loser. Why? He has ballooned up to nearly 500lbs!!! I had to give that background (more info about his survival and accomplishments are in his autobiography) to illustrate how someone who's survived and accomplished so much, let himself get so big? If it could happen to him it truly can happen to anyone else. Because it's not a big event, it's slow, gradual, and enjoyable in some aspects. And honestly his weight is probably more life threatening in a realistic sense than any of his near death experiences. An accident is something you survive and walk away from, weight isn't something that just happens and ends in a flash and you walk away from it.

I have a suspicion that this happened because he (like a lot of people I know) didn't care if he gained weight or by how much. In his mind he was confident he could lose it whenever he wanted, if he chose to do it. Maybe the fame, money, and attention he and his new gym that he just built would get was the motivation for him to decide to lose it. And I have no doubt he will lose massive amounts of weight. He has trained harder (no matter what he might say for publicity) than anyone on that show ever has and he can do it again.

But a lot of other people have that mindset. I can lose it if and when I want to so it doesn't matter if I get fat. I have control over my life, I still have a choice so my weight doesn't bother me (sounds like the excuse of a lot of addicts which is an important connection because food is like a drug). Sorry to say a lot of people who think this is wrong. Anyone can become obese as Rulon has illustrated. But losing weight is not as simple as making a choice or turning on a switch. It is a constant struggle and choice made every moment of the day.

And even if you do lose it, it will never make up for the loss of opportunity and quality of life you gave up prior to it. An ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.


About the Author:

Sam Y. is a Personal Trainer, Coach, Performane Enhancement Specialist, Corrective Enhancement Specialist, and holds multiple certifications. He is also an avid Martial Artist, training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Kickboxing, Boxing, and MMA. He is also the author of the popular fitness blog All Out Effort as well as the popular martial arts blog Inner BJJ. You can find him in the Los Angeles area personal training his clients, or at home annoying his wife, or on Facebook at his personal fitness page.

Slow Down

It takes time for your brain to realize it is full. Not only that but it takes time for your system to digest food. Slow down the pace at which you eat. Drink water in between bites, chew more, talk more, eat a variety, eat the parsley, suck on the lemon in your water. Whatever it is, find a way to slow down. Your body will benefit in many ways from this small change.

Fads Have No Quality Control

There is a reason why your favorite magazine, even those concerned with health and weight loss are not scientific journals. Same could be said to a lot of books and TV shows that cover health and weight loss. They are not scientific,and do not have any quality control over content.

Look at the cover of some magazines saying the secret to weight loss is this! Then 3 months later they contradict themselves and say the secret to weight loss is that! Now the reader glossing over magazines periodically doesn't even realize the magazine has contradicted itself. Not only that but the writers aren't scientists or health experts. This is also true for books, written most often by celebrities or celebrity trainers.

On TV shows and talk shows, they will bring on an expert who is only an expert because they wrote one of these articles or one of these books. Then a few shows later they will bring someone else who contradicts the other expert. Never bringing in a discussion on who is right or who is wrong.

This happens because of the goal. The goal isn't to find truth, the goal is to get buyers, viewers, sell a book, sell a DVD, make money. Who would watch someone or buy something or read something if it said the same things all the time. Work out more, eat less. What's new about that?

Fads will come and go and come back. Different people will tell you to do this or that. Different people will ask me if this works or they heard that works. Just remember that even the magazine or show doesn't know what works either. We are inundated with information and instead of empowering it makes us feel helpless.

Just stick to the basics. Throughout my life in martial arts, my teachers have always taught me one principle. Your art should fit into the palm of your hand. It should be simple and based on a few concepts. Whatever you do make sure it's simple and based on science.

Eating Less Living Longer

The Japanese (who live longer than any other country outside of certain tribes and groups) have a saying, "Eat 80% full and push 20% away." There has been a study going on for over 20 years studying the life of Rhesus monkeys. One group eating freely. There other on a restricted diet. Same food just less of it (30% less). Sufficeth to say the monkeys who eat less live longer.

But who wants to live forever one might say, I just want to live a good life. Well looks like the quality of life of the dieting monkeys is better as well. They have better brain function, less diseases, less problems. How can you say you live a good life if you feel sluggish, live in pain in your last days, and have chronic other problems?

Never being full, never being hungry. What a concept. I know people who have a hard time eating through out the day, they will binge but skip breakfast because they aren't hungry yet. In actuality its easier to eat when you're not hungry than to eat when you're already full.

If you want to eat steak, go ahead and eat it. Just eat less of it. And eat some more some other day or some other meal. Don't eat like there's no tomorrow because if you eat correctly, there will be lots of tomorrows.

Vegan/Vegetarian Is The Way To Go?

I know this is a big trend right now. Even amongst some athletes. I know many health and fitness gurus who swear by it. Mainly endurance athletes, they always bring up Dave "The Man" Scott as their main example. He is a multiple time Ironman winner and is the bench mark on the Ironman. Look on Google and on topics on how to argue with meat eaters, to best examples of athletes who are vegetarian, he comes up over and over. But little known fact. He stopped being vegetarian in 1992 (though he still avoids red meat) and came back out of retirement to the Ironman in his 40s to do it again and came in 2nd and 5th.

We perform better on a varied diet. We shouldn't base our eating habits around meat, but we shouldn't eliminate it either.  There is no simple answer. Balance is always the key. I will repeat that idea often about balance. It's something I look to attain in life, diet, exercise, martial arts, spiritually, and mental well being.

There are days I go without consuming meat at all. And then there are days where I will gorge myself. But overall throughout the week, the month, through my lifetime meat will add color to my primary diet of everything else the world has to offer as far as food. No matter what though everyone is now agreeing on one thing, eating whole foods. Weight loss is part of the goal, but so is longevity and quality of life.

How people have used him as an example for their work shows a big fallacy that occurs all the time. Especially in health. It's something I became familiar with in philosophy. It's the idea of having a preexisting biases and finding evidence afterwords to prove your bias (in this case vegetarianism is the way to go and use Dave as an example even though he's no longer vegetarian). As opposed to finding evidence then creating your judgment off of the evidence. It's called bad science or bad logic. It happens in politics all the time. You have an agenda then you find the proof after the fact. I may be guilty of this as well so always do your due diligence and taking everything as what they are, just information. Get a balance blend and form your own opinion.

You're Only As Good As...

You're last work out. And your last work out is only as good as your last repetition. This means you carry along the residue of your last work out. If all your work outs are good, you will get into phenomenal shape. If you exerted everything in your last repetition then you know you deserve a good rest. A lot of people have mindless, long, and low impact workouts. It's better to have quality work outs infrequently than to have low quality work outs frequently.

If you had a great work out, then rest and food is not your enemy, it is your friend.

Nature of Fat

People think fat is just whats subcutaneous. Meaning right below the skin. It is not. The hidden fat, the dangerous fat is the visceral fat that is in around your organs and in your arteries. Just because someone may look lean, is not the total picture. I too at one point was very skinny, but had very high cholesterol and fat around my organs. I was skinny but ate very poorly. The term used now is called skinny fat. Even more reason not to base health just on appearance.

New Years Tip

Because it is officially 2011 I wanted to start updating my blogs more often and give some tips for the coming year. Here is another food for thought. People become vegetarians for moral reasons but a lot of times its for health reasons. In general vegetarians live longer than non-vegetarians.

But it's not because they do not eat meat. I know a lot of unhealthy, obese, sickly vegetarians. Vegetarians do better not because they don't eat meat, but because they eat more vegetables in general. It's not the absence of one thing, it's the abundance of another. Because typically people who eat meat do not eat enough healthy vegetables.

Balance is always the key. In health, diet, exercise, philosophy, logic, science, and zen.

Can We Blame Genes For Everything?

In a previous post I stated that sometimes it's just genetics. But that is just also part of the equation and meant we all have a designed body and frame. This does not mean we can't lose weight, get lean, or reach our goals. The thing people too often say is, that their parents are fat so they are predestined from birth to also be fat because they have "fat genes."

Let me give you some examples to think about. People who have lung cancer also have parents who have lung cancer. Parents who smoke also have kids who smoke. Is this genetics or passing down of habits? Fat parents most often have fat kids. But fat parents also have fat pets. Does this mean they gave their dogs their "fat genes?" Or is it most likely they overfed their kids and their pets. Most likely they passed down their poor eating habits to their children.

Even if genetics is a factor, there are so many other variables involved that it is nowhere near the explanation of the total picture. You may not have the genes to be a body builder but you still have the genes to be fit. Your lineage survived this long for a reason.