From the category archives:

Motivational

Tone your abs the right way!

During my personal training I come across many people who believe that the secret to flat abs is a gazillion crunches and ab exercises. They rather do those and never succeed than doing what it really takes to get flat abs or even a six-pack.

It is critical to understand that ab exercises have yet to lead to flat abs. No matter how many you do, you will never have flat abs if that is what you are relying on.

The reason for that is quite simple. Your abs are covered by subcutaneous fat, meaning fat sitting between your skin and your muscle. And we are talking about a ton of it. You have easily a couple of pounds of fat sitting there.

Now, one pound of fat is 3500 kcal. Have you ever thought of  how many crunches you would have to do to burn 1 pound of fat? You would have to do roughly 35 hours of crunches none-stop to burn 1 lb of fat.

Hey, if you choose to do that, then be my guest. I rather get those flat abs faster.

If you want to do the method that I use in my personal training or boot camp, then do this:

  1. Get your butt moving, I am telling you, sitting on your rear for 8 hours/day at work and then 3 hours in front of the TV at home makes your butt and your abs look quite doughy.
  2. Get your nutrition right. Okay, this is a key thing. Get vegetables, fruits, and small portions of lean meat and carbs like potatos, or rice. Speaking of carbs, make sure they are whole wheat, or as little processed as possible and make sure that you stay away of crap like donuts!
  3. Do some strength training, and I do not mean lifting 1 lb weights one hundred times but actually use a weight that fatigues your muscles within 10-20 repetitions completely or almost completely. It will help preserve and grow your muscles which will “tone” your body once you start losing the body fat. If you are a woman, don’t be afraid to lift. Unless you lift like a bodybuilder you won’t look like one. Now grab those weights and get going. By the way, the handle of your recliner does not count as a strength exercise.
  4. Cardiovascular training does have benefits besides burning calories, it helps you get more stamina, fatigue less during the day and overall feel better, and just like with strength training, the walk to the refridgerator to get the ice cream does not count as cardiovascular training. A good way of judging if your work intensity is high enough: be able to reply to a question with a short answer but not with a whole lecture.

 

Are you ready to actually achieve your goals?

Are you ready to be successful?

Call today to check out our personal training or boot camp.

Check ya later,

Michael

What a thousand other people taught me!

On Friday from 7 pm to Saturday at 7 pm over a thousand people participated at the 24 Hours Of Booty, a fundraiser event that managed to raise more than a million dollars for a good cause. We had a ton of fun and thanks to Denise, “Wicki” and Pam also great helpers that assembled/disassembled tents, provided encouraging words and helped with food and drinks whenever necessary. Steve, Jessi (my wife), Laurie and me participated for our personal training studio as team Shape Up.

Everyone did an amazing job. Steve rode 90 miles and had originally aimed for 50 miles. Jessi doubled her mileage by riding 50 miles and on a mountain bike, no less. I rode 120 miles and ran 14 miles around the loop. Laurie who had planned to do a double Ironman event this weekend (4.8 miles of swimming, 224 miles of biking and 52.4 miles of running/walking), did exactly that, despite a hurting chest wall after a fall. I am so proud of you guys!

But there were many other people as well who did really great.  Some of them were struggling with cancer, others were paraplegic, some of them were semi professionals.

I learned a couple of things from all those people while riding there:

  1. Determination trumps Disability
  2. Be smart, take breaks, get back on and continue!
  3. Conserve your strength and give a steady effort instead of blowing all your energy reserves at once.
  4. Team effort and encouragement from friends can give you energy even when you thought you had nothing left.
  5. Pace yourself on the difficult parts of your journey (in this case the hill J ) and pick it up on the easier ones and the miles/progress will come.
  6. Conquer your fear to do something you thought you were not able to and discover a new you. I was amazed by what some of the people were doing that were “out of shape”.
  7. Your mind can be your biggest strength and your biggest weakness.

 

Think about your weight loss, training or fitness goals and think of the people I just talked about. If they can do this then you can achieve your goal. Let us do it, 4-6 lbs of weight loss for the next month. Log your food and training every day and get the ball rolling. Imagine the new you. You can do it, I know you can. I can help you with it. This is what I do!