Memorial Day Weekend 2008

Well it's here - Memorial Day Weekend. The unofficial start of Summer. The great "unveiling" - when the shirts come off, the swimsuits go on and the entire.World knows exactly how good or bad your dieting and exercising was for the last 3-4 months.

My colleague Jason Ferruggia has called this weekend - Judgment Day!

Are you ready? :)

If not - you have two more BIG weekends this Summer in which to dial in your physique and make a huge difference. That's right - it's not over -- you still have two more Judgment Days this year!

Goal setting is all about setting S.M.A.R.T. goals -- and T stands for "Time line". Athletes peak for National Championships, Trials and World events. Just because you're training for fat loss or to look better naked - doesn't change the fact that DEADLINES are extremely effective tools.

So we're going to set two this Summer.

Your next goal is Independence Day (for my US readers) - July 4th - only five weeks away.

With a combination of a kick start plan, a solid workout and nutritional support program and a healthy dose of motivation - you could easily be 10-15 lbs leaner by then.

Your next goal is the end of summer - the Labor Day weekend (first weekend in September). This is currently fourteen weeks away. So if you're looking a little flabby this weekend or feeling a little embarrassed about your physique -- you can still make amazing changes. It's never too late.

This is an opportunity for you to look completely shredded - rock hard legs and abs by Summer's end.

But you still need to start now.

Here's the fat loss basics (if you need more info see below):

1. You need to create a caloric deficit - no two ways about it - you must burn more than you consume.
   
   
2. The most effective way to create that deficit is to use a combination of diet and exercise
   
   
3. Your diet should consist of lean proteins, fruits and vegetables. Keep starches and refined carbs to a minimum. Keep your fluid intake high (water only), and try to eat at least 4-5 small meals per day. This will help maintain blood sugar levels and keep you from blowing your diet.
   
   
4. Exercise - interval training and metabolic resistance training will provide the most bang-for-your buck. Steady state aerobic training just doesn't burn enough calories for your goals right now, and a bodypart training split will be less effective than total body training for fat loss.
   
   
5. Try to exercise at least six days per week - three days of interval based cardio and three days of resistance training.
   
   
6. Supplements: there is almost nothing that will make a difference. Sorry. Certain supplements can boost metabolism, or increase your energy somewhat and these may be useful - but in terms of real world "pounds of fat lost" I have yet to see anything that really made a difference. A multivitamin and a fish oil supplement are vital though - but more for your overall health. a protein shake or meal replacement powder can be useful for convenience but are nothing more than high quality food.

If you need a jump start - go HERE- this will take care of some fat quickly in the next four weeks. And when you are ready to really ramp it up and change your body forever - get over to Afterburn Training and get started on that program.

My friend Skwigg posted this on her blog a week or so ago:

"If tomorrow were Wear Your Bikini to Work Day, would you...

a) be totally fine

b) stop eating immediately and head for the gym

c) die of fright and shame

Powerful question. :-)"

--
AC
PS -All talk of fat loss aside - enjoy your holiday weekend. But PLEASE remember the point of this weekend - remember our fallen heroes and spare a thought for all the troops who are still fighting for us today. My thanks to all of you.

The Evolution of the Fitness Profession

Ever notice that the Fitness and Sport training industry is a lot like an evolutionary process?

Everything goes pretty steadily for a while and then something big happens to change it.

The rise of Group Exercise classes.

The advent of ‘Spinning’

The growth of the ‘Functional Training’ movement

The re-introduction of ‘Kettlebells’

The mainstream aspect of ‘Assessments’

And every time one of these ‘new’, ‘big’ and ‘ground-breaking’ changes happen, it’s always the professionals who were in on the ground floor of the opportunity that become the most notable and successful.

Johnny G.

Juan Carlos Santana.

Pavel Tsatsouline.

Gray Cook.

These names are iconic in stature.

They are the professionals who ‘got in first’ on a movement, spearheaded its rise and have forever become attached to its legacy.

And because of their ‘take action’ nature, ‘successful’ is the easiest and most accurate way to describe the careers of the professionals I mentioned above.

So what’s the key to your success in this industry?

Well based on the lessons learned in the above examples, the key to your success as a Fitness
and Sport training professional can be boiled down to one simple sentence consisting of two basic words:

What’s next?

What is the next ‘new’, ‘big’ and ‘groundbreaking’ movement?

Moreover, will you ‘take action’ quickly when you see it?

It’s absolutely no secret or surprise to anyone that the next big splash in this industry is the youth market.

Personal Training and Sport Performance Conditioning for children, youths and teenagers is widely accepted as the fastest growing market in the entire industry.

Over 1 million kids hired Personal Trainers in 2007 within the United States alone.

It’s a $4 billion annual market in the United States and growing rapidly.

Entrepreneur Magazine has called ‘Youth Fitness’ and ‘Youth Sports Training’ two of the most opportunity-oriented and expansive fields in the world.

My friend Brian Grasso has collaborated some of the greatest minds in the world of pediatric exercise science and development and started a movement that will have an impact through the four corners of the globe.

The International Youth Conditioning Association (IYCA) is an organization intent on regulating the education and knowledge of the Fitness Professionals who work in the area of youth fitness and sports training.

But much bigger than that, they have created an association that is 100% based on providing opportunity and career advancement for professionals looking towards new and exciting endeavors as our industry hits the next stage of its ‘Evolutionary Process’.

The saying ‘to the early bird goes the spoils’ hasn’t become part of our common speech by accident.

Those who act first and fast achieve the greatest success.

This exact email is going out to nearly 1 million Fitness Professionals just like you all over the world.

But less than 500 of them will be able to ‘get in early’ on this ‘new’, ‘big’ and ‘groundbreaking’
opportunity.

That’s fewer than 1%.

Will you be one of them?

Click the link below and see what I’m talking about –

IYCA - the future of the fitness profession

--
AC
www.alwyncosgrove.com

Eat like a Byrd...?

Byrd at Heavyweight (214lbs)







Byrd at Light-Heavyweight (175lbs)

For the past fourteen years - Chris Byrd, an Olympic silver medallist has competed as a heavyweight boxer - winning the world title twice, and defeating such heavyweight stalwarts as Evander Holyfield and David Tua enroute.

After losing the title to Wladimir Klitschko - Chris Byrd decided to drop TWO weight classes, losing 40lbs and continue his career as a light heavyweight.

This doesn't sound all that surprising until you realize that Chris weighed in as a heavyweight around 214lbs. Always in great condition - I'd say he was no higher than 12% bodyfat.

On Friday night - Chris Byrd weighed in at 174lbs. He was in shape for sure - making weight about four weeks before the fight (no dehydration or any last minute cutting weight techniques employed) and reports have put him at 8% bodyfat. (Full story here)

But do the math....

214 at 12% = 188lbs of lean mass and 25lbs of fat.

174 at 8% = 160lbs of lean mass and 14lbs of fat.

So Byrd's weight loss regimen resulted in around 11lbs of fat loss, and TWENTY EIGHT pounds of lean mass lost. Only around 25% of the total weight loss was from fat.

His making weight plan was basically long distance running (around 7 miles per day), and small meals every two hours (according to the article - although in a video interview he mentioned only eating once per day in the initial stages).

Take home message - long distance running works great as a weight loss tool - but without supportive nutrition and some form of resistance training to maintain lean mass - it fails as a fat loss tool.

--
AC
www.alwyncosgrove.com
PS - Chris failed in his light heavyweight debut - being knocked out in the ninth round.

Ropes Gone Wild

This is some of the coolest new cardio training stuff I've seen in a while. Anthony Diluglio showed me this when we presented together in Boston earlier this year. After trying it out-I immediately booked Anthony to come out and do a staff training for me.

It looks simple - but let me tell you - the heart rates can go through the roof with it. I have a couple of athletes doing this as part of their metabolic work right now and I can assure you - they love it (i.e. absolutely hate it).



Anthony and I are working on an article about rope training right now. Check out some more clips at http://artofstrengthrgw.blogspot.com/

--
AC
www.alwyncosgrove.com

May Q&A II

Q: The problem with you is that you cherry pick research to support whatever products you want to promote. All you want to do is advance your agenda...

A; Ok you didn't really a question but (other than the rest of your email which is just profanity-laced insults really) this is a somewhat skewed criticism.

You have to think of this the other way around. I'm not a researcher. I'm not a librarian. I'm not sitting in a basement churning out ebooks and spending more time posting online than talking to real people -- I'm a trainer. I'm a gym owner. And I'm a coach. I train people in the real world and see real world results. My entire income depends upon getting the job done with clients and athletes in the real world not reading medical databases.

I don't put much emphasis on research at all actually. In fact - I don't even look at research initially.

First - I see what works in the gym - in reality. Then I talk to fellow gym owners and coaches as to what they see working in their facilities and share what I see. Then I look for research to explain the why.

So - it's my own experience and observations. Then it's the experience and observations of some of my colleagues. And then - only then - it's the research. So I guess that's "Cherry picking" as I'm only looking at what I've already seen work in the gym.

And again - I'm not looking at research for methods - I'm looking for further explanation as to the mechanisms. Charlie Francis once mentioned that he felt training research was at least five years behind what coaches and practitioners are doing. I agree.

So I don't look for research to tell me what to do -- I'm looking for research to explain why, so I can go back and upgrade our programs. I look at research on body composition, sports performance, cardiovascular health and endurance, strength, hypertrophy and cancer amongst other things. Very occasionally I share some of that here -- but trust me - I read far more than I ever write about.

To be blunt, I have more clients than are enrolled in most studies. And I don't often see studies that show a better way of doing things than we do at our gym. When you think about it, even if I did -- am I really going to believe research that tells me that I'm completely wrong with what I see going on with 200-300 clients per week, based on their study with 12 participants? The weight of the evidence is what I look at.

There will never be enough research, or research subjects in traditional trials to ever tell us what we need to know and in the time frame we need to know it, whether it’s fitness or otherwise.

Trust me - and this is important - I'd change our methods in a split second if there were better methods available. My income is dependent upon real world results - not upon advancing an "agenda".

As far as products? You've got be kidding me. I started training people in 1989. I didn't publish a single article until 1997. My first product was 2004 or so. I was working with people long before I was asked to write about anything. So you're way off base there.

Incidentally - for fat loss I recommend reduced calories, reduced refined carbohydrate intake, regular or often increased meal frequency, interval training, resistance training and higher intensity cardio. If there is research that shows a better fat loss effect from a completely opposite approach - I've yet to see it.

And in fact the "opposite" would be increased calories, increased refined carbohydrate intake, irregular and reduced meal frequency, no interval training, no resistance training and no high intensity cardio (or only low intensity I suppose). I have no doubt that this "opposite" approach won't work too well. Try adding 500 calories of white bread to your diet and doing no exercise and let me know how you do....

However - I'll confess that sometimes the research disputes the mechanism by which I think something works. But as I've said - it doesn't dispute what actually works.

For example - It's pretty much accepted that interval training and weight training - despite burning less calories during the session - results in significantly greater fat loss than burning more calories from longer sessions of lower intensity activities.

In isocaloric comparisons - weight training results in more fat loss than aerobic training. The mechanism by which it works is definitely something outside of the workout period - an adaptation. I've always suggested that it's EPOC or an increase in RMR primarily.

But there's been a lot of discussion recently on how big (or small) an effect EPOC actually has.
Tom Venuto and I emailed back and forth on it last week and Tom suggested that the increased fat loss is possibly part EPOC, part fat oxidation and part increased mitochondrial enzyme activity.

But we also looked at the conclusion of the Trapp and Boutcher Interval training study:

"at the end of the intervention, despite a significantly lower exercise-induced energy deficit, the high intensity group had lost significantly more fat as measured by change in skinfold thickness relative to energy expenditure."

But then the authors go on.... about WHY ELSE it might work:

"It is feasible that the change in fat mass that occured during HIIT may have been influenced by unreported changes in diet. Indeed, HIIT induced suppressed diet intake may be one of a number of factors underlying the fat loss effect of HIIT. for example, HIIT may have suppressed appetite or decreased attraction for energy dense foods"

So it's possible that HIIT works because it reduces appetite at some level and the participants consume less calories. Even 10% calories less per day would add up to some significant fat loss over a 12 week period.

But to be honest - I don't care. I really don't care as to why. I'm only interested in what works - and what repeatedly works with our clients.

Regardless of proposed mechanism - what would you do to maximize fat loss over ten weeks if you only had 3-4 hours of available exercise time per week? Would it really be different than what I recommended above?

If we found out tomorrow that we were completely wrong about electricity -- would you stop turning on the lights when you got home?

--
AC
www.alwyncosgrove.com